Month: April 2017

A Year of Poems – Day 163

April 30, 2017

How long, how long will the painted rainbows fall
In shattered panes around the teardrop splash?
The stained glass once arched above the room
In a dome that had no ending,
and yet was not a sphere.

They were children throwing rocks into the sky,
They were old enough to know so much better.
One rock flew astray into the domed earth
The plates shattered, spun apart
Pieces floated on the sea.

Adrift, Adrift, how long will we be adrift,
Clutching at our islands as we ride the teardrop splash,
Searching for the fading stripes across the sky,
Those shattered, still reminders
Of a whole, sparkling dome.

A Year of Poems – Day 161

April 30, 2017

What is the butterfly to the world –
one living thing to another,
a winged breath and the heaving spinning earth
with thumping caverns and surging veins,
steaming breath which swirls about the sky?
What can the insignificant say to the signifier,
who breathes life and spins night and day?
What can an insect mind comprehend of planetary ecology?

The wind greets the butterfly,
knows its feather wings,
and sends it safely on its way.

A Year of Poems – Day 160

April 28, 2017

If I had to say we lost one thing,
when we jumped off the ship to swim to shore,
I would say that we lost words.
Yes there were caskets of salt pork,
fresh water and grog, dried fruits,
nuts and all the other luxuries we once scorned,
But what I really miss are the words,
The words that came with food
are now waterlogged, the ink runs,
the pages twist and float on the ocean floor.
They will be read no more.

A Year of Poems – Day 158

April 26, 2017

I cannot read eyes
although I know the words.
The look and lift
and cock-eyed glance,
the lingering gaze that flicks away,
the fuzzy face that never focuses,
the look that weighs a soul.
Eyes speak with eloquence,
gesturing on the street corner of my heart
with all the passion of an evangelist
and words I cannot understand.

A Year of Poems – Day 155

April 23, 2017

Washed, in need of cleansing,
Clean and soiled again,
The laundered clothes are muddied
more often than they’re clean.

It’s a never ending cycle
as heartless as the mud.
The scrubbing wears the fingers down,
the lines they move from thumb to brow,
and the task is never finished
till the earth runs out of dirt.

Stand proud for the rain falls on you.
Sing out for the dirt will not win,
and clothes will be white again.

A Year of Poems – Day 154

April 22, 2017

I cannot elevate my mind past this station.
My hymn is elation, for I have seen creation,
and though it’s state is lessened,
and I may not see it mended
before my life is bent towards that silence
where the grass goes untended,
yet the birds sing so I sing
a song which will not be silenced;
It bends slowly towards the shout of justice
which will crack like the cymbal signaling the concert’s ending
echoing round the chamber,
completing the music begun hours before,
resounding in our heads a song more perfect
than I or the world could ever sing
as we press upwards past silence
to contemplate the source of the song.