Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Poem: By The Wild-Haired Corn


I don’t know
if the sunflowers
are angels always,
but surely sometimes.
Who, even in heaven,
wouldn’t want to wear,
for awhile,
such a seed-face
and brave spine,
a coat of leaves
with so many pockets—
and who wouldn’t want
to stand, for a summer day,
in the hot fields,
in the lonely country
of the wild-haired corn?
This much I know,
when I see the bright
stars of their faces,
when I’m strolling nearby,
I grow soft in my speech,
and soft in my thoughts,
and I remember how everything will be everything else,
by and by.
- Mary Oliver

en el solsticio veraniego/on the Summer Solstice

(y a mis queridos cangrejos/& to my dear crabs)


Cancer

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...2_12-43-05.png

The crab longs,
after the long day,
to tear from the sky
that coin of cold silver
that is the moon.
Its eyes are ruby beads
& in its entrails
it keeps a sensitive pearl
which it longs to carry very deep,
very deep
to the cardinal point of the waters,
the primordial depths of the sea.

- Rafael Jesús González


Cáncer

El cangrejo anhela,
después del largo día,
arrancar del cielo
esa moneda de plata fría
que es la luna.
Sus ojos son cuentas de rubí
y en las entrañas
guarda un perla sensitiva
que anhela llevar muy hondo,
muy hondo
al punto cardinal del agua,
al fondo primordial del mar.

Toda Guerra es por Tierra


All war is for land, though
it knocks at our doors dressed
in austere religious robes or cradling
law books in the thoughtless
crook of its arm.

The Land is wordless, she welcomes
lovers, rapists, pilgrims and psychopaths.
She opens, accepts destiny
Dependent on her children’s
memory of the sweet root
of suckle playing on their palates.

Warriors, her children, bewildered
and dumb look to the clerics,
to politicians, poor substitutes
for gods—perverted, cruel understudies
to the One who holds them all.

They seek Her without gazing
beneath their heavy, brutal boots.

She is patient, sorrowful,
She is here.

- Rebecca del Rio

Bird Dance

Each morning I observe
birds coming and going
outside on my deck

I sit out in the sun and sip my ginger tea
and notice them tentative in the trees
all around- maybe one or two stealthfully
sneaking in quickly for a seed or two

When I retreat to watch from inside,
writing at my table gazing out
through the double sliding glass doors,
they eagerly arrive-
Singles-usually a large blue scrubjay or
a black and white red-capped woodpecker
who chases everyone else away-the bullies
The smaller ones- towhees, finches, chickadees
and more mostly brown with a touch of orange or yellow
come in pairs or trios or more.
Now and then a hummingbird hovers circling around
and sips at a nearby flower

The winged adventurers are calling
their family and friends to the party-
Several on the ledge, a couple on the feeder,
one at a time in the nearby hanging birdbath-
a sip from the edge or a dunk plunging in and out,
the water glistening on their flapping wings.
They chirp and chatter calling to each other
like welcome friends-

I have my field guides at the ready trying
to learn a few of their names-
Why can’t they announce themselves on arrival?!
Good morning giant lady, I’m a Red-breasted Nuthatch.
Hello there, we’re Black-headed Grosbeaks.
Hey, look out! I’m a Downy Woodpecker.

Daily I stumble along, I would be an Audubon Society disgrace-
I can’t seem to identify them and remember their names
BUT I enjoy the life energy they bring and share
Reminding me that
Yes, I’m alive and grateful to be here.


- Carla Musik

This poem touches me today since I am realizing that my birdfeeder, and the filling of it, is not in accord with nature's balance and God's creation of it. I am seeing how my desire to feed the birds is based on a selfish wish to see & enjoy (& so I feed) Certain birds ~ not the scrub jays, for example, but the house & gold finches, yes.

So the birdfeeder I employ doesn't make room for jays & other large birds to get to the seeds. Then also, I am realizng, the birds squabble w/ each other, competing for placement on the feeder, whereas in trees and on grasses, there is Plenty Of Room for every one; No need to bicker & peck & chase each other away.

I am feeling that my wish to enjoy the birds in this way is damaging to their otherwise perfectly harmonious life! Including, they become dependent on my feeding of them, morning after morning, perched, looking, waiting for the feeder to be filled... instead of finding seeds, worms, nats and others, God's creation offers all birds, in abundance.

I appreciate this forum... a place to respond to the poems Larry abundantly offers us! Thank You,

To feed or not to feed ? …

Should you feed the birds?

It is a little ironic that all nature enthusiasts know that it is “bad” to feed the animals … they become dependent on the food, and in some cases will become a nuisance or dangerous, prying open cars or breaking into homes to get more food. Then the animal has to be put down or moved to a new habitat. But that sort of bad outcome is more common with, say, bears than it is with, say, chickadees. The irony here is that bird lovers, who are always nature enthusiasts, do not seem to balk at setting up bird feeders. In fact, approximately on half a million metric tons of seed is put out for the birds in the United States and the United Kingdom.

This must have an effect on the birds, for better or worse. Two studies just published by the same research team address this issue.

To read the article in full, go to https://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2...eed-the-birds/

My Mother’s Lost Heart

Loses her heart in life’s trials,
Leaves behind her a closet of nightmares
No one born of her declares
The belly of her predator full.

A loving funeral with naught a tear.
Come Emily D. with your gravity,
Lend words to capture the depravity
Mother/daughter disbanded wear.

Human beings are relentless.
We demand heaven or fall into hell,
Limbo for her stillborn no sell:
That soul insult found her address.

Her youngest lived the play for all to see,
Shakespeare’s depth in that tragedy.
From that one’s husband flowed the grief
Full enough to embrace life’s thief.


- Brian McSweeney

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Ronaldo:

To feed or not to feed ? …

Should you feed the birds?

It is a little ironic that all nature enthusiasts know that it is “bad” to feed the animals … they become dependent on the food, and in some cases will become a nuisance or dangerous, prying open cars or breaking into homes to get more food. Then the animal has to be put down or moved to a new habitat. But that sort of bad outcome is more common with, say, bears than it is with, say, chickadees. The irony here is that bird lovers, who are always nature enthusiasts, do not seem to balk at setting up bird feeders. In fact, approximately on half a million metric tons of seed is put out for the birds in the United States and the United Kingdom.

This must have an effect on the birds, for better or worse. Two studies just published by the same research team address this issue.

To read the article in full, go to https://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2...eed-the-birds/

---

For anyone who is following this conversation, perhaps you'll join me, listening to a seminar on Creating Loving Eco Systems, with AJ Miller (also known far & wide as Jesus) facilitating. I love & appreciate the understanding he brings to this equation -- https://youtu.be/ndtLmM20hH4https://www.waccobb.net/forums/images/youtube.png

Julie (who posted yesterday's response about feeding the birds), wow, the cumulus light of sky this morning!!

​The Call
(The first and last lines of the poem are from Tennyson’ s “Ulysses”)

“Though much is taken, much abides,”
speaks old Ulysses,
home at last but yearning still
for new adventures and a farther shore

as I, becalmed
in this airless city,
yearn for mountains and sea,
space and silence.

Oh, a mad restlessness is on me!

I will not be Penelope,
unravelling
the work of my days
while awaiting – what? – revelation?

Like the old man,
(and at his age, too)
I will count what still abides
and plan my escape.

I hear him shout
from afar,
as if through a shell held to my ear:
“Tis not too late
to seek a newer world!”

- Nina Mermey Klippel

may alchemy spin pain into love
in this moment
may the love course through me
weave fear into gratitude
tendrils touching and being touched by others
with this breath
beaming
brimming
boundless cloth shimmering
deep
full
unfurling with grace
gossamer garden bed
growing courage and kindness
tucking us in with tenderness

- Andrea Marquette

Riprap



Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way,
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles—
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.


- Gary Snyder

The Price of Experience


What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house , his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain


It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the wagon loaded with corn


It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is filled with wine and with the marrow of lambs


It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear the sounds of love in the thunder storm
that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field and the sickness
that cuts off his children


While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door
and our children bring fruit and flowers


Then the groan and dthe dolor are quite forgotten
and the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison
and the soldier in the field
When the shattered bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead


It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me


- William Blake

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!


- Langston Hughes

Dreamers


Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.


I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.


- Siegfried Sassoon

Emerald Spider Between Rose Thorns

Imagine, not even or really ever tasting

a peach until well over 50, not once

sympathizing with Blake naked in his garden

insisting on angels until getting off the table

and coming home with my new heart. How absurd

to still have a body in this rainbow-gored,

crickety world and how ridiculous to be given one

in the first place, to be an object

like an orchid is an object, or a stone,

so bruisable and plummeting, arms

waving from the evening-ignited lake,

heading singing in the furnace feral and sweet,

tears that make the face grotesque,

tears that make it pure. How easy

it is now to get drunk on a single whiff

like a hummingbird or ant, on the laughter

of one woman and who knew how much I’d miss

that inner light of snow now that I’m in Texas.


- Dean Young

Lime Tree


On a spring day out at Harmony Farm,
among some herbs and sorrel, we bought
a Meyer lemon tree and a Bearss lime
and planted them in urns on the new deck.
And then, so quickly, you were ripped from life
and I consigned to tend these things alone.
Through a hard summer slowly the leaves
of the lemon blackened. I called nurseries
and tree farms. No one knew anything.
Autumn rain left it shriveled and weeping.
When I was out of town a strange cold snap
raved away on the frozen deck,

lemon leaves fell on the new red planks.
The empty, tangled boughs were blighted gray
and the lime too, stricken and it’s green leaves
long gone by spring - I quit watering it.
But a friend came by to help in the back.
The place was a wreckage of my winter.
When she watered it I said “don’t bother,
that one is dead”, but she said “no, look”.
A tiny green defiant speck had cracked
the gray bark to speak a just command
against the blue spring sky - like a barnacle
attached to a world that had died.


- Kevin Pryne

The Flag


At our best
we show our true colors,
fly the flag that stands
for our deepest, broadest
allegiance to each other,
to the Earth holy & diverse.


These are my colors:


red of my love that colors all
& is the root & flower & fruit,
the heart of my belief
& what I know of truth.


orange of my abandon, my surrender
to my living, mindless of laws
that would fetter the steps
of my wildest dances.


yellow of my joy that tastes
of the sun, exultation in the
wealth of the senses,
root of my power & my love.


green of my hopes that wing
my desires & lend will
to my acts, that inform
even my opposition
to outrage.


blue of my memories
that make my history of wings
that soar to the mountains
& drop to the ravines,
complex topography of myself.


purple of my sorrows, my remorse,
my shame for betrayals of the heart,
most often of omission,
through weariness or fear.
This is my flag;
its colors run,
diffuse at the edges,
blend, shade
into hues, half-tones
difficult to name.


The tongues that praise it
are so many, so varied, & so sweet
their chorus rivals the birds'
& silences the angels in their flight.
Known everywhere
as sign of peace & joy,
let this be our flag;
its colors dance.


- Rafael Jesús González

What I visualize after reading Rafael Jesús González's poem:

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Flag


At our best
we show our true colors,
fly the flag that stands
for our deepest, broadest
allegiance to each other,
to the Earth holy & diverse.


These are my colors:


red of my love that colors all
& is the root & flower & fruit,
the heart of my belief
& what I know of truth.


orange of my abandon, my surrender
to my living, mindless of laws
that would fetter the steps
of my wildest dances.


yellow of my joy that tastes
of the sun, exultation in the
wealth of the senses,
root of my power & my love.


green of my hopes that wing
my desires & lend will
to my acts, that inform
even my opposition
to outrage.


blue of my memories
that make my history of wings
that soar to the mountains
& drop to the ravines,
complex topography of myself.


purple of my sorrows, my remorse,
my shame for betrayals of the heart,
most often of omission,
through weariness or fear.
This is my flag;
its colors run,
diffuse at the edges,
blend, shade
into hues, half-tones
difficult to name.


The tongues that praise it
are so many, so varied, & so sweet
their chorus rivals the birds'
& silences the angels in their flight.
Known everywhere
as sign of peace & joy,
let this be our flag;
its colors dance.


- Rafael Jesús González

---

Water Shed


The green expanse of duck weed
Parts and there he sits,
Proud - or so I imagine -
In all his feathered irridescence,
Shedding water with neither thought nor effort.


The late Spring rains
Fall on Sonoma Mountain and English Hill,
Dancing down the Laguna and Atascadero Creek.
So Wintergreen becomes Summergold.


But where are the salmon, the steelhead,
The pronghorn and the grizzly?


There is so much for us to grieve now,
So much lost that we will never see again.
And yet so much still arising
That we have only begun to dream.


Can we shed despair
As we shed our tears
And see with clearer eyes
The shining form just now emerging?


- Larry Robinson

Song


The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction


the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.


Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity -
for the burden of life
is love,


but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.


No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love -
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
- cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:


the weight is too heavy


- must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.


The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye -


yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.


- Allan Ginsberg

The Marvelous Women

All women speak two languages:
the language of men
and the language of silent suffering.
Some women speak a third,
the language of queens.
They are marvelous
and they are my friends.

My friends give me poetry.
If it were not for them
I’d be a seamstress out of work.
They send me their dresses
and I sew together poems,
enormous sails for ocean journeys.

My marvelous friends, these women
who are elegant and fix engines,
who teach gynecology and literacy,
and work in jails and sing and sculpt
and paint the ninety-nine names,
who keep each other’s secrets
and pass on each other’s spirits
like small packets of leavening,

it is from you I fashion poetry.
I scoop up, in handfuls, glittering
sequins that fall from your bodies
as you fall in love, marry, divorce,
get custody, get cats, enter
supreme courts of justice,
argue with God.

You rescuers on galloping steeds
of the weak and the wounded–
Creatures of beauty and passion,
powerful workers in love–
you are the poems.
I am only your stenographer.
I am the hungry transcriber
of the conjuring recipes you hoard
in the chests of your great-grandmothers.

My marvelous friends–the women
of brilliance in my life,
who levitate my daughters,
you are a coat of many colors
in silk tie-dye so gossamer
it can be crumpled in one hand.
You houris, you mermaids, swimmers
in dangerous waters, defiers of sharks–

My marvelous friends,
thirsty Hagars and laughing Sarahs,
you eloquent radio Aishas,
Marys drinking the secret
milkshakes of heaven,
slinky Zuleikas of desire,
gay Walladas, Harriets
parting the sea, Esthers in the palace,
Penelopes of patient scheming,

you are the last hope of the shrinking women.
You are the last hand to the fallen knights
You are the only epics left in the world

Come with me, come with poetry
Jump on this wild chariot, hurry –


- Mohja Kahf

Old Friends


Sometimes I see things at the edge of light --
small animals scurrying into shadow
from the corner of my eye, sometimes a man
shuffling off the road, disappearing
between the trees, lit by headlights, then gone.
And sometimes I hear things
outside the sandy blur of my tinnitus --
the yowl of the tom cat that’s been hanging around for months,
unseen birds, whose presence I scrawl on the white page,
what I think is a machine grinding in the distance, or voices,
the mind’s mutterings, over and over saying – what?
Sadness sadness sadness. There it is again,
grief, guilt, love. My old friends,
what can I do with your unsung laments,
your impossible losses?
Wind stirs the bamboo.
Brazen at last, without its close coat, the lily
blooms bright orange.
Something rustles in the woods and disappears
in the dry leaves at the edges of my life, small
soft animals in the corner of my eye -- no, not ever really
gone. For all our lives are intertwined, our songs
caught in the golden throats of the lilies,
there at the rim of the moment, in the half-light, the half-dark
of the world, where all suffering has its place
within the slightest breeze, the slow turn of petal in sunlight, each vein
distinct amid the gathering density of one life twisting
its strand with another in the great invisible braid
of the hidden river that moves through all of us,
here and after, ever after into mystery.

- Elizabeth Carothers Herron

The Oral Tradition


Read great poems and store them in your heart
No external storage devices are needed
When you begin to fathom the depths
Of the Oral Tradition and start your trek
Into the intricate wilderness of memory.
Of course no one in this casual modern world
Crisscrossed by information super highways
Told you that your own mind is a net
Trawling the seas of infinity,
And the ports of memory you anchor in,
Each one a place from which to disembark,
To trek into vast unexplored mindscapes,
And the synapses your mind weaves effortlessly
While you toil in the fields of poetry husbandry
Will simply surprise you endlessly.


- Brian McSweeney

Writing Unencumbered


I wrote books I thought would please my masters.
I wrote poems that were received as illumination
while others balked at a complexity, too confounding.
I wrote stories, long and short, from the inside out.
first and second person, too often muddled by a
vague and ambivalent author. Someday I hope to
sit under an open sky and write until twilight, maybe
beyond, when all the light is gone and whatever
I am writing is no more than a part of the darkness.
I will refuse a lamp and any revision by moonlight.
And there sitting and merged in intimate dark, my
mind smoothed out over the beckoning blank pages,
I will feel the ease of the pages writing themselves
with the pure natural invisibility of my hand.


- Rich Meyers

Makeweight

Love is the weight of the world
that we tote on our backs
in spite of the weight
longing to recognize
the truth lost in thickets.

Love is the light of the world
that can blind us sometimes
as it shines from behind
a searchlight piercing the dark
a signal to those searching love.

Love is the wait of the world --
that break in the music,
that moment of doubt,
it waits for all to catch up
to find the rhythm again.

Love is the way of the world
that breaks our hearts
then mends them again
and, if we wait,
brings weight and light to us all.


- Don Edward Morris

Their Bodies


That gaunt old man came first, his hair as white
As your scoured tables. Maybe you’ll recollect him
By the scars of steelmill burns on the backs of his hands,
On the nape of his neck, on his arms and sinewy legs,
And her by the enduring innocence
Of her face, as open to all of you in death
As it would have been in life: she would memorize
Your names and ages and pastimes and hometowns
If she could, but she can’t now, so remember her.


They believed in doctors, listened to their advice,
And followed it faithfully. You should treat them
One last time as they would have treated you.
They had been kind to others all their lives
And believed in being useful. Remember somewhere
Their son is trying hard to believe you’ll learn
As much as possible from them, as he did,
And will do your best to learn politely and truly.


They gave away the gift of those useful bodies
Against his wish. (They had their own ways
Of doing everything, always.) If you’re not certain
Which ones are theirs, be gentle to everybody.


- David Wagoner

Ode to the Tomato


The street

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_13-50-04.png

filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
the light
splits
in two halves
of tomato,
the juice
runs
through the streets.
In June
the tomato
cuts loose,
invades
the kitchens,
takes over lunches,
sits down
comfortably
on sideboards,
among the glasses,
the butter dishes,
the blue saltshakers.
It has its own light,
a benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we have to
assassinate it;
the knife plunges
into its living flesh,
it is a red
viscera,
a cool,
deep,
inexhaustible
sun
fills the salads
of Chile,
is cheerfully married
to the clear onion
and to celebrate,
oil lets itself
fall,
son and essence
of the olive tree,
onto the half-open hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism:
it is the day's
wedding,
parsley
raises
little flags,
potatoes
vigorously boil,
with its aroma
the steak
pounds
on the door,
it's time!
let's go!


- Pablo Neruda, translated by Stephen Mitchell


Oda al tomate


La calle
se llenó de tomates,
mediodía,
verano,
la luz
se parte
en dos
mitades
de tomate,
corre
por las calles
el jugo.
En diciembre
se desata
el tomate
invade
las concinas,
entra por los almuerzos,
se sienta
reposado
en los aparadores,
entre los vasos,
las mantequilleras,
los saleros azules.
Tiene
luz propia,
majestad benigna.
Debemos, por desgracia
asesinarlo;
se hunde
el cuchillo
en su pulpa viviente,
en una roja
vícera,
un sol
fresco,
profundo,
inagotable,
llena las ensalades
de Chile,
se casa alegremente
con la clara cebolla,
y para celebralo
se deja
caer
aceite,
hijo
esencial del olivo,
sobre sus hemisferios entreabiertos,
agrega
la pimienta
su fragancia,
la sal su magnetismo:
son las bodas
del día
el perejil
levanta
banderines,
las papas
hierven vigorosamente,
el asado
golpea
con su aroma
en la puerta,
es hora!
vamos!


- Pablo Neruda

Living At The End Of Time


There is so much sweetness in children’s voices,

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...4_09-37-25.png

And so much discontent at the end of day,
And so much satisfaction when a train goes by.


I don’t know why the rooster keeps crying,
Nor why elephants keep raising their trunks,
Nor why Hawthorne kept hearing trains at night.


A handsome child is a gift from God,
And a friend is a vein in the back of the hand,
And a wound is an inheritance from the wind.


Some say we are living at the end of time,
But I believe a thousand pagan ministers
Will arrive tomorrow to baptize the wind.


There’s nothing we need to do about John. The Baptist
Has been laying his hands on earth for so long
That the well water is sweet for a hundred miles.


It’s all right if we don’t know what the rooster
Is saying in the middle of the night, nor why we feel
So much satisfaction when a train goes by.


- Robert Bly

Today


When you're allowed

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...5_09-24-46.png

To live
When you might have not,
You change forevermore


Become at once
Older
And younger
Than before


Gingerly you try
Your wings
Find that you can
Fly


And horizons
Of the nether world
Bring light
Back to your eyes


What you'd gnashed
With scorn and
Spittle
Only yesterday


Gentles softly in your
Gratitude
To be alive
Today.


- Scott O'Brien

Lines Written After the Funeral of a Holocaust Survivor


In passing over to a brighter side
a good man has left us spirit rich
if body poor—

I was privileged to heap one handful of earth upon his grave
returning a favor

he was never aware of in life— For no reason,
in his gentle, forgiving way he smiled at me once— Although I cried
to see his young daughter

standing helpless over her cold father’s open grave, I knew her grief
would salve her loss some day.



But what of our loss? Who will give us a hand full of earth
when we need it? We live in a culture of death and tattoos
[no stanza break]






without meaning, worthy of no respect— the way she looked
two weeks before she died of typhus Anne Frank could sell cosmetics today— the numbers on her forearm
could win you the lottery.



Don’t take the chance.

Instead, meet me at the cemetery and we will face the hereafter together,
pay our respects holding hands until
his family has passed by wreathed in mourning
awake at last

- Greg Hayes
(1952-2014)