Save the Day

Still young
I had no inclination
to make a realistic space
for play.
An ambulance carved
whiff-skew patterns
in mother’s carpet.
Alarming bombast
in my elastic mouth
eeeooo eeeooo.

It was a softer sound
my mother would make
when applying band-aids
to skinned knees.
A tap on the head signaled
that maintenance was complete
and without fear
I went to play with the boys.
eeeooo eeeooo.

It was older when I discovered that
the siren signaled hope, not trouble.
The marks of a car going whiff-skew
against wet pavement run to the base of a tree.
A single leaf alternates red and blue
as the ambulance pulls away.
Alarming bombast stuck in my throat.
…

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The Queen’s Last Edict

The Queen sits
on a stack of books.
Gray eyes scan,
Years of green looks
having stolen
their blue away.

Through thick glass
those aged seers
follow long royal fingers
as they pass
unclear words. Her
digits fear the end
of turning.

Her people are outside.
Terror in its infinite softness
forces them to choose.
They cry like children
under darkness.
Gray sky replacing
the days of sanguine blue.

She doesn’t want to be
their mother, or their sun
She is a symbol,
the image they want to take away,
and in her eyes
there is no comfort
nor any solace,
only what is right
and what is true.

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Driving Along the Reservoir At Night

It is too dark to see.
Headlights illumine only road.
No stars. No sky above.
4 tires bear the load
of a junk car in the darkness.
It’s so dark that tree and horizon
all blend into the hole
above it all.
Yet I can still feel the water.

Somewhere to the right, to the left,
there is water.
I can barely float
I could never swim,
Yet I know it so well.
I know its there.

As a child my mom would bounce me
up and down
left and right
from knee to knee.
Excitement
as I bobbed up and down
watching the horizon
jump around.

Above me
the incomprehensible
whole that I arrived from –
two deep eyes
two fragile hands
brushing thin strands
of midnight black hair
away from a face
of radiant light.

Yet somewhere inside her
I know there is water
unseen, invisible,
but there. Undoubtedly.
Amidst the light that makes
sight impossible
there is flowing water;
a flood dammed.

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Mum is the word

No one will notice a hundred years from now
That she spent her life in the name of good
and that her red apron, with the lonely cow,
could never be as dignified as it should.
Archeologists will never pour over her greatest works
due to the hungry children who needed them.
Nor will others write about her influence, her quirks,
her philosophy, or the dress with the theta on its hem.
Her effect will not be weighed and measured by naked eyes,
For the sake of us all,  such science could never understand
Where the origins of wonderment began
Or what causes a son to realize
         That life is worth living, if you live it right
          and day can follow from nothing but night.

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