Poems one through five
Poems sixteen through twenty
TWENTY-ONE
I have a poem
In a box still packed
toward the next move,
In a drawer with socks that
have lost their mates,
One is on the edge of this
held breath,
Biding its time
...
TWENTY-TWO
(Earth Day)
Earth, in its extinction,
Now has a day to commemorate
Its once existence,
As each thing we use for our own,
destroys the ecosystem,
We'll atone,
Plant flowers, protest,
write a song,
In our houses warmed and cooled
by fossil fuel.
TWENTY-THREE
Imagine Thoreau when he burned the woods,
That's the essence of earth existence,
We're never who we think we are,
Reaching for simplicity, we are complex,
Or vice versa,
We invent mythologies of men
who walk on water,
raise our dead from time to time,
and thrash the sellers in market squares.
We aren't where we were
nor where we're going,
and not yet complacent
in present tense
We create,
and believe our myths
so completely,
they trap us in new riddles,
We're told,
B-r-e-a-t-h-e,
as if the going out and the coming in
Will revive us,
The wheel will turn,
Dawn will come,
These are things we tell ourselves,
What then? Do we fold our hands and wait,
for a god to descend or dew to rise?
Movement is our way,
Some, with purpose, to achieve,
Others, with a sigh, to laugh.
TWENTY-FOUR
Plans are made to be laughed
into startled submission,
and yet, we plan,
here, there is ample room for improvement,
We walk past moments we recognize
and turn our heads,
aggravating the threads
that tie it all together.
Pay no heed to what has gone,
It's only drift at the edge of
man-made lakes,
Summers come and winters go,
and we age like newscript
in the rain,
Here's the plan,
lean in,
listen to the wind,
it does not have secrets but has seen them,
feel the sunlight as if it is a new thing,
in truth, it has not lived before,
Have you become this weary in one lifetime?
You'll be an infant with troubled eyes,
unless you get this right,
(((there is no right))).
TWENTY-FIVE
find a patch of sun and shade
and let the day ripple across your skin,
windlown,
and swept by trees against the sky,
in this, there is a stilling,
don't drift so,
the past was
the future isn't,
and you can't be-here-now,
that's not how the world works,
no matter how many masters
tell you it is so,
you don't see them
in their own doubt,
they have distilled themselves
into frozen almost-smiles,
for your pleasure,
their insistence on giving advice
proves they have nothing to give,
I will unlearn a thing or two about obedience,
support the sky with wonder,
and kick aside dead tree branches
of old mythologies,
Even with this, I will not free myself,
it can't be done,
but days will become light once more,
like hillsides lit by childhood suns
and quenched by thirsty nights.
poems 26 -- 30 (30 for Thirty) April poems
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