................................................................................................
The Poetry Of...
L. Ward Abel............................................................
The Darkling
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
........................................Raymond Carver
A conspiracy of birds
settles in my kitchen
then spreads out
to a wider mind.
What starts as an action
unnoticed, repeated,
turns to mercury;
rolling little balls
on a tile floor, uncatchable
insidious,
creeping. And then
it is too late to halt
the quiet wings of night,
the liquid lack of color
that permeates. So know
that a dream
can backfire as surely
as the rusted pipe
of an old black Pontiac.
Heyoka
The Lakota call him
thunder clown.
He contradicts
for a purpose,
has visions to make a point,
underlines what is obvious
and then does the opposite.
To endure this life
is a place of honor.
He acts out a dream,
gives us comfort
in our own choices,
is the fool so that
we don't have to be
the fool.
WHERE GREENVILLE ENDS
The other night
I heard the term
"joining the choir invisible" again,
and that much-used image
startled me anew;
as if unified in postmortem song
we all intone,
huddled over
those remaining behind,
that choir as source-of-muse maybe
where bereaved composers squeeze
and drink
or where memories cure
or where comfort lives.
But I prefer to think of death
less like a Sistine Chapel oil
and more like
mist
where Greenville ends
and fields begin,
brothers and sisters
walking barefoot
silent
in ones, rarely twos,
part breeze, part light,
on morning
or evening
strolls
without need.
Without need
of anything at all.
Main Page
This site sponsered by
|
<![CDATA[<xmp>
<body>
]]> | | |