Water Drop

A water drop falls
earthbound
from a nubilous sky,
finding temporary shelter
upon a blade of grass;
until the scorching sun
carries it once again
to the heavens...

It falls
upon a passerby who
mumbles a curse
to the coming rain...

And once the skies have wept
it rests upon some growing thing.

A boy arrives
and
falling
to his knees,
his eyes behold
and capture in his soul
the depth and width and breadth
of the Universe
inside this tiny entity.

Bereft

My sister died last year. I wrote this as an awkward tribute to her, or a statement of my helplessness. I miss you, sister.


BEREFT


Every movement
each thought
deliberate, trivial.

The pouring of the coffee.
Sitting.
Standing again.
Phone rings.
It's my mother.

Her words are forming and the sounds are saying that it is all God's will.

I watch myself nodding
as the sounds come from my throat
in some form of comfort.

She lost a child last night.

Somewhere in the world a mother lost a child last night.

The voice on the phone says it has to go.
I tell it I love it and shut the lid.

Images of someone's life pass through my memory.
Only the large images show through--
they are like boulders
jutting from the dead ground.

My body sits in a chair,
staring at a blank screen.
I understand, now
the meaning of the word bereft.

MY FATHER CALLED TO SAY GOOD-BYE

[Earth has made its rotation back to day.

Ladybugs stumble on blades of grass;
clay pots are kicked and smashed;

yellow flowers peer up
at a cloudless sky
as my Father calls to say good-bye]



"Tell him he's home.
He does not believe he's home."

Banished to holding up the sky,
He has conceded

to the elements of his mortality.

Now chained,
like Samson to the pillars,

"Bring them down,
my Lord,"

"Bring them down upon you."

Peering from his walled cage
he sees the green, green hills
beyond the captivity of his mind.

"Let me go, Lord."

He calls.

He crouches.

He remembers.

And with one, last, final surge

leaps into oblivion.

Seagull

I found a seagull whose left wing had been broken. He was wandering the familiar sand, dragging what was left of his flight gear behind him.

His eyes showed signs of bewilderment, as he could not figure out how to get back to the sky.

I had to go home. The sun was setting. I left him there, wondering, in the sand. A couple of his compadres had landed and would fly away momentarily, I was sure, just as this one would have done the day before he lost his gift of flight.

I came back the next morning. His body was cold in the sand. He had found his wings again, surely, only in better form.

I Wish You Were Not Gone From This Cold Place

Eliot

I wish you were not gone from this cold place

I should like to have met you face to face

and reclined with you there

in an epiphanal embrace.



You were old when I was born,

old as Prufrock when I was born;

and in the midst of my great depression

you found your wings,

your wings

and your final digression.





Why do we see clearly, all, only one moment before we die?



I hope you watch, amused

from your advantaged position.

Michaelangelo lives,

he lives to this day

In decrepit conditio;



and the women,

the cat-fog,

the gutters cry for you;

they are but useless mimes

sprawled out in a block,

in a block or two



for no one listened to them like you.



I hear your voice in vacant lots,

in alleyways

and sea-waves.

The muses cry themselves to sleep.

I can hear them from the water's edge;

they do not cry for me.



Come and visit us again,

flow through your student's eager pen;

come remind us of our fate;

remind us there is time,

there is always time

to murder and create.



I shall toast my tea to you

when all the world is unetherized and new,

and watch with wondering eyes,

with wonder and surprise,

the wonder of you.