Category: Poetry

A Mass for the Dead

Liberal Librarian1 Comment

(Cross-posted on The Obama Diary.)

For the dead, we say, “Amen”. And for the living.
There are too many dead, and the living are riven.

Every day, a new horror, a new loss of innocence,
And the night-dimmed tide swallows us.

There is no innocence; this is a fallen world,
And men of evil revel in destruction.

When is it enough? It’s never enough.
Violence has an army of reasons,

And peace seems to be an idea
Honored more in the breach than the observance.

This is not your heritage; it is evil.
This is not your freedom; it is slavery.

Do that which you would have done unto you;
Flee from that which is harmful to all.

The answer is there, to be teased out
Of life, hard life, the only life we have.

Remember the dead, for they speak from the earth,
Pleading, “Let us not be in vain.”

Aubade

Liberal LibrarianLeave a comment 
In the morning the sun’s limp yellow light
creeps sullenly into the dark-filled room;
particle by particle its bright-
ness takes shape; it fails to dispel a gloom

of more than night.  Cracked eyes and stirring flesh,
bedclothes cast aside; mumbled greetings, minds
a-whir; the day conspires to enmesh
them, like the old.  Slipstreamed time too fleeting—

bathe! dress! eat!—nothing settled from before;
the looming day a welcome eight hours’ break
from things unsaid but thought.  Best not to bare
words better left silent; just go and make

a life of sorts, like everyone they know:
work, distract, suffer through that little blow.

Father & Son

Liberal LibrarianLeave a comment 
He said

“I live three miles from the ocean

but I haven’t been to the shore

in three years.”

I say, “That

sounds awful.”

                          “It’s easy

to forget the things

of beauty

that abound all around you.”

I nod in agreement,

furtively looking

at my watch, eager to get home,

hoping he won’t keep me

much longer.

                        “Look out of

my window.  Do you see that tree?

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Look how it stands, impervious

to everything we throw at it—

the city’s rot, the earth’s

malefactions.  Year after year it goes

through its cycles,

the constant rebirth, until

it outlives us, gently mocking us

with its silence.




“But I forget it.

I forget it unless forced

to consider it, as your presence

has forced me to consider it.

It’s a trapping, a mere

accessory, a bit of color

that doesn’t impact me

in any way that’s significant,

except on a day like this; and

even a day like this—talking here,

sipping coffee, getting along famously—

will soon fade, be of no

matter, ebb away into the 

wash of time.  And that’s the way

that beauty perishes: rarely through

willful destruction,

but through mere neglect.”




I left soon after,

for the day pressed on me—

many promises to keep,

many more people to please.

I, too, live near the ocean,

and haven’t been to the shore;

and I have a tree in my backyard,

tall and glowering,

insisting on its weight,

mocking me by its age, by its

permanence, refuting my claims

to property, to earth, to life.

The world conspires against you,

not out of malice,

but because, like God, 

it would say “I am what I am”.




Look at your watch; look,

and watch the hands fly.

I feel you most

Liberal LibrarianLeave a comment
I feel you most in your absence;

Your ghost wanders around the house,

Your scent a faint memory

Of when you were here.

 

I know what I did to drive you off;

I don’t know if I could change it.

We are fired in a crucible,

And the hard matter is not easily remade.

 

Can I tell you there’s a gaping hole

Where you used to be?

I can. But that’s not enough.

Mere protestations are empty,

 

Like this poem; the words will woo

Those who do not know me.

Were you to read this, you’d nod your head,

Smile slightly, and put it away.

 

Be well. Be happy. Be complete.

It is an irony that I who left

Now feel abandoned. That, too,

Is a particularity of the self.