Posts for June 10, 2020 (page 3)

Feet and back toward the camera, a child lies on the broad sidewalk in front of shops and other businesses in an occupied Polish city, May of 1941. That’s all the image and caption relate with any certainty. We don’t know if he’s alive or dead. The expressions of those around him don’t tell us, even those of the other children. He could be tired of walking or waiting, and so is resting. Perhaps a sibling said something taunting or unkind, or a parent said no to buying chocolate, and so he’s thrown a tantrum. No hand seems to reach out to him, no stranger’s compassion turns to see what’s wrong. It feels like his invisibility is complete, he is illusory, a figment.  

And this is where I get lost, become frightened, turn inside myself to find some anchor, for even my grandfather, openly racist and disdainful of others, taught me by example to take a moment, cross the street, kneel at the side of someone’s possible distress.

      Shannon

These three month of time
on my hands, I have waited for you
to call me.

I have not written poetry,
words on paper waited for you
and avoided the line, silenced rhyme.

“Can you find me?”
you text and I become a river, cold,
flowing unstoppable in my haste

to get to you, to circle your waist,
to reflect your eyes for a story old
as echoing water,  Solomon’s poetry.

I flow, listening to all my wild
feelings until I find you on the sidewalk.
I want to touch your lips

the way a river dips
into shallows, goes hush, no talk,
for poems are feelings inside, they hide

like stones in deep pools in starlight.

Incessant thoughts
swarm
my head
like
a nest
of
hornets,
the stings
constant,
painful.
I should
be
numb to
their
attacks,
I’ve dealt
with
these
bites of
worry
and
twinges of
guilt
for
twelve years
now,
almost thirteen.
But,
they still
hurt,
they’re
just as
painful 
as
they were
when
it started.
They’ve made
the creases
of my 
brain
their home
and
my trauma
their 
daily meal.

Creeping up from dead wood,
the grey digits warn of a buried
hand, powdery and small,
but frightening in their semblance
to the real thing. Someone brave
and inquisitive put these spores
to work, hollowing out the ribs
of a violin to a delicate balance,
until the “Devil’s Trill” sounds altogether
too convincing…

The Carolina wrens trill their distress,
a red alarm, blaring alert of danger,
again and again until my awareness
is drug out onto the porch –

The cat bathes lazy and obtuse in the sun
under the nest while momma hops
and screams. I go out, to bring the cat
in the house, again.

Everywhere, a threat. Everywhere folks
just trying to keep their babies
alive. Everywhere, people’s attention swinging.
Everywhere, citizens getting up to help.

a little brown lizard crawls
out of the soil from a potted plant
he seems to emerge from nowhere
but he inches away in search
of breakfast, maybe an ant or worm
soon he vanishes like magic

did he really disappear, or is he just hiding?

what about

       racism?

              prejudice?

                     injustice?

magic can’t make these things disappear

                      what can?

      a changed heart

              a changed mindset

Purple clovers climb
a lone hillside carpeted
in bright goldenrod.

Molecular cloud
grew interstellar roses
hydrogen-alpha

Ionized petals
spiral in ruby rosettes
floating through ether

Nebula blooming
west of scorching Sirius
summers great portent

Portrays painterly
visions violet & vivid
celestial frame

When I see you
I see you 
limned in gold,
sunset cascading around you
a crown,
a veil.

Some things in this world
must not be touched
and that gold
bites,
tiny singeing fingers
when I reach.

When I see you
I see you in gold
but I do not squint,
do not look away. 

Let it burn,
I think.
Let it all burn.

To chase and be chased.
Even if you catch your ghosts,
they always come back.