Month: November 2015

Moment of Destruction

In the moments before
The destruction of a life,
The slow breath
And calm heartbeat,
Without hitch or skip,
Do not warn
In those moments
Before the devastation hits.

The volcano’s eruption,
The tidal wave’s wash,
The comet’s smashing,
All apt metaphors
For the destruction
But for the warnings
They give.
For the destruction of a life,
No warning is given,
No alert, no alarm
Blasts to ring in the ears
Before the crash
Before the hit,
Before the strike
Of a doctor’s news
In a sterile
Waiting room.

Words blasting away
Futures planned
For years yet unlived,
Routines lived
In the present,
Day -to-day.
All thought
Exploding
Fanning out
Like twisted metal
In rolling clouds
Of cement dust,
That is
The instant destruction
Of Lives.

In the Flutter of Wings

In the morning light
I watched the hummingbird
In the butterfly garden
When a monarch stopped by too

What a spectacle and spectrum of wings
These two do present
Feeding upon the nourishment here
The Monarch, a slow, tender flutter
The hummingbird, a battering blur of the air
In this spectrum of movement
Is there some secret knowledge,
A truth they seek to share
Differing by vast degrees
Of the same elemental force
Against the air
The aloneness within the movement
A thing that cannot be shared
For I have never seen
Either fly in tandem
With another of their kind
The journey to this garden
Each one took alone
Each seeking the same nectar
Each hungering
Yet alone in the seeking
Is there something profound
They wish to say
With each flutter and flap of wing?
Or is the message simple and concise?
Yes, perhaps it is just this—
We each journey in the seeking
Alone.

Brand New

What it is
To hold
Such a delicate thing
With ten tiny fingers
And ten tiny toes
So new
So fragile
So strong
In the cleanness
Of mind
Of heart
Of soul
All sweetness
Of smell
Of soft touch
Knowing nothing
Of life’s grime and dust
Let this one
So small
So new
Teach the wonder
Of being human
And having life