People
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LsWGpM6Siw] The Reed People, the Bog People, People of the Sun, the Chosen People, gr…
At the pivot end of a life
(between this world and the next)
all the sleek black horses lined up for
inspection
all the torn and tattered love letters tied in their
appropriate bundles
and the words we’ve left in the air like
washing hanging out to dry
(some come back to us having been
happily stretched and whitened while others
track us down with yeah sad and
unsightly stains)
At the turning point where the
dark woods ahead begin to take
shape showing deeper and deeper shadows and
sharper contrasts
and the miles of galleries behind us with our
finger-paintings hung straight or hopelessly
askew are suddenly
neon lit
And at the poignant points of gratitude after
hurricane or flood earthquake or
Dracula-threat that turns out to be
nothing after all but
incessant mouse-squeaks
and we find ourselves high and dry in His Mercy as
usual with a
strong wind blowing through our clothes
and our breaths more mixed now with the
singsong melodies of the surrounding air
on both purple-shadowy mountain peak or
front porch on a couch with spouse in a
delicious downpour
But the pivot-point anytime anywhere
at any point
and the long or short lines of well-wishers
are everyone or no one as the death woods
open up doorways between trees and show
shadows both luscious and soberingly frightening
one step ahead of us with our
one foot still firm where we are in life
and the other tentatively raised for
forward movement
waiting a moment for the upsurge in our
hearts to show us which way ahead to go
(and ahead the
best place willingly or unwillingly
to go)
And this poem has no way of ending except this
pivot point in expectant tightrope
suspension between
this world with its presumed
finalities and the
next with its personal
Godly apocalypse somewhat
domesticated for use
at the constant and immediate
swivelingly bewildered and
drunkenly reflective
pivot end of a life
8/28/11 28 Ramadan (from Ramadan is Burnished Sunlight)
Categories: Poems, Ramadan / 'Eid, Death, Fasting