Poems

A life of increments
Requires a leap,
Delirious
Unexpected
A tumble
Down a
Grassy
Hill side
Where
A shoe
Might
Be
Lost.

What marks one life’s border
Between one life and another?
Does a custom’s house
check shipments? Does an
Agent review passport stamps?
Does a ferryman collect coins?
Does a saint count good deeds?
Are evil deeds deducted,
In between banalities ignored.
Perhaps simple passages
Across a roundelay of lives,
Incarnated, one after the other,
A rationale for glimpses
We have of other times,
Of similarly unclear answers
About life, love, loneliness,
Heaven, hell, purgatory
Or, nothing whatsoever.

Must meager words convey
What needs be said this time,
What we say and what we hear?
Put aside our skimpy history
Of parsimonious nouns,
Clauses and verbs galore,
One after another,
With no prepositions,
Just hesitant commas,
Dispersed over the page.
Imperious periods
Sprinkled there and there,
But, for propriety's sake,
Never exclamation points.
Perhaps we can explore
Some newer words, some
More expansive meanings,
That might be able to convey
What needs be said this time.

Poem

the

words of the

poem

spread

out
upon
the

page

Images
at

play
on
the

blank
stage

Treading the edge of January light
The weather a little iffy
Evocative of a soon to be cold day
Mirrored in gray gusty winds
A wintriness of the mind
Followed by chapped hands