First, A favorite of ours:
MORNING CAME SUN
The morning came sun
emerged in rhythm
light
pooled by pulse
the morning cleared cover
left intact a week
in ever widening heartbeats
cadent clearness quietly
expanding like smiles
the morning caught vigor
imparted to children
laughing in tune
with the growing sky
the morning
showed sun
enlightened us
children of all
we had been
missing
the morning filled sun
in all we had forgotten
all we had lost
and we found it
smiling.
WRITING NEAR A SMALL FIRE
It is the subtlest of squelchings.
It is a day-long drizzle falling unabated
onto what once was a roaring fire.
Passively, the flames, the glow
and finally the embers will abate
and cease.
In among the raindrops escape
a scant few pockets of pure gas;
instantly flaming, writhing in hope,
bright blue flames dancing
about the seemingly innocuous
drops of water.
It takes a constant gathering
of branch and bramble,
faded leaf and thistle, log and dry root;
a continuous stoking and husbandry
of flame and burning ember,
and absolutely vital
a well chosen poker,
charred
but slightly
where it leaves its mark,
smooth to grasp where it
is wielded.
It is the most dire of dampenings.
It is a well-intentioned rain,
benefactor to the trees
without out which there is no fire,
yet persistent, constant,
incognizant.
It takes a patient huddling
near the imperiled heat
and recognition that indeed
the air round the fire is but slightly
drier
yet harboring hope of a clear day
tomorrow.
WILL
If it is immediate
they will be enthralled.
If it entails I
they will devote the world.
On and on;
they are masses blathering.
You will join them,
but even a poor poet
was made for greater stuff.
It is no more than chaff
under your boot
as they call you distant,
demented, detached;
and you will be.
You will not care.
For you will touch beauty;
taste passion, see visions,
and you will smell truth
and hear God.
You will look in
your willful insanity;
drink it deep,
find it sound,
and go on.
WORDS I LOVE
I thought it inexplicable
(as I care for maniacal
but not for maniac)
that there were words I did not
love
- perfidy among them
-
and those I did
- derelict drifts in.
How wrong, and worse
how consequential.
The oil tanker abandoned
-
its crew, its owner, the very
rats
all gone -
left to rot
(for rot I love, but rust I do
not)
on a remote coast
too far from anywhere to be
worth scrapping,
(scrap I yearn for, though demolition
leaves me cold)
an eyesore, a blot,
a corrupt behemoth of negligence
until an artist comes along
and signifies its beauty.
A dereliction of duty,
a perfidious laziness in me
demolishing ideas by leaving words to
rust;
a maniac
who could not see
beauty in perfidy
until the artist
coaxed it free.
Copyright 2002 by Joe Sichi
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Illustration: Copyright 2002 by Evelyn Sichi