Bless you
For your bright eyes
That greet my morning
And urge me from my bed
Bless you
For your dancing feet
Making me laugh
When I have forgotten
I know how
Bless you
For your begging eyes
Guilting me outside
To breathe in nature
And the joy of life
Bless you
For your gentle touch
Your head leaning in
Reminding me
I am not abandoned
Not alone
Bless you
My rescue
My sweet dog
Serpentine
mmm?
Tourmaline.
mmm-hmm?
Quartzite, calcite, jadite, pyrite
now you’re talkin’, baby
Obsidian, gypsum, mica, agate
lay it on me
Cenozoic, Archaeon, Hadean…
Pumice, magma, pyroclasts
you’ve got my pulses racin’
Stalagtite, batholith, phenocryst
Halide, carbonate, vitreous, silicate
sing to me, baby
Biotite, Muscovite, paragonite
that’s my song
Hornblende, olivine, feldspar, rhyolite
kiss, me, love me, I’m yours!
You stayed home all weekend
Again
Your mother called
After two weeks of your silence
To ask if you were still alive
You waste all the minutes
Not bound to barest need
Just what do you find
So fascinating about that blank wall
That keeps your attention
For hours at a time?
In your secret cave, your home,
What is it that causes you to mourn
Till your body quivers beyond control
With the gasps of silent tears
That do not wet your eyes or face?
Have you no voice to speak?
Is it language that confounds you?
Can you find no words
To name the thing
That traps you there
Alone and hiding?
Do the worlds
Of your heart frighten you?
Have you condemned
Your heart to silence
And shadows?
Where are you going
How far away will you flee?
Will anyone ever again hear
The music of your laughter,
See your eyes once more
Fill and spill over in tears
Of compassion or grief?
I wait for your answer
Margins, intended to force order,
Succeed only if we accept them.
They are not natural.
The richness of life
Overflows imposed margins
Like people spill unstopped
Across unseen political borders.
Even in the wild
Where a first look sees a line
Marking the edge of life—
Beyond which nothing seems to grow—
Yet, should we look more closely
With a trained eye,
There we will find life
Dormant waiting for change,
Or actively thriving in adversity.
Spilling into paper margins
Are the fantasies
Escaped from boredom.
In the margins
Are the afterthoughts,
The reconsidered,
The questions to pursue.
Margins have the climaxes
Of thoughts left unexpressed.
What are margins
But arbitrary boundaries?
They are as much imagination
As the insubordination
Bursting into their cordoned off space.
The accountants are circling
The printer that won’t
Tra-la, Tra-la
The audit’s on hold
For the data in queue
Tra-la, Tra-la
For spreadsheets and statements
Print-buffered and stalled
Tra-la, Tra-la
Send an alarm. Go send it now.
For, yes, it’s I.T. that they need!
Tra-la, Tra-la
Swift is I.T, so swift indeed.
The printer begins to hum!
Tra-la, Tra-la
The accountants, like birds, they are—
They swoop, and they grasp and then circle away
Tra-la, Tra-la
Till a clicking of calculators
Is all that we hear
Tra-la, Tra-la
No thanks for I.T.
Just a very deep sigh
Tra-la, Tra-la
“New sums to be found”
is the hum that is heard
Tra-la, Tra-la
The accountants have faded away
Behind reams of paper and columns to add
Tra-la, Tra-la
And all is quiet again
Along the whole financial front
Tra-la, Tra-la
So sing Hallelujah and shout hooray!
For I.T. has saved yet another day.
Tra-la, Tra-la
Tra-la, Tra-la
Run!
Run to your homes!
Grab your child,
Your husband, wife,
Neighbor…
Run!
Hide!
Behind the door
Beneath the stoep
In a cave
In a ditch.
Hide!
Then pray:
Lord, please
Let the torches be blind
Tonight. Lord,
Let the moon white shadows
Pass me by tonight.
Lord, lord,
Make me not afraid
not afraid
not afraid…
I write out the pain
because it hurts too much
to keep it inside.
And it never makes anything
Better
to tell anyone
when it’s still there
and real.
So, I write the pain
from my shadow
and lay it in the light
of white blank paper
Till joy—
a little brook—spills
sweet and fresh
against the thirsting
empty places
where the hurting was
And I smile
again
and go on living.
Is my being so unlike,
Unknown, unseen
that like some dark star
only a subtle change
in the pattern of the others’ lives
suggests that I may be?
Is there no astrologer
no physicist
no mathematician
who might at least
suspect the hint of me?
Or shall I cease to be
before even one
briefly dreams
that I once was?
After such a promising start
What a sad ending this is,
Without even one curtain call—
Just a single word
Riding the crest of a sigh
Into silence
good-bye
If you are late to the Christmas Service
You might see George
Huddled in the dark
Beside the stairs to the door
But in your hurry
You probably won’t
And that’s just fine with George.
He comes every year for the songs
That are sung as Christmas Eve
Becomes Christmas Day,
For the music he hears then
Will quiet the train in his head–
The train whose clanking and rattling roar
Shreds every thought before it is grown.
The music of midnight Christmas Eve
Shifts that train to a distant track.
Its sound is not so loud.
It is drowned out by the songs,
The songs that bring a warmth
That has nothing to do with coats or fire.
When the first door opens at Service end
George scuttles quickly away
Deep into the darkness where no one looks
Down to where the garbage is kept.
While the people and their noise
Slowly fade into the distance
George tries hard to hold
In his head
The songs he has heard.
If he is lucky
He will sleep without dreams
Tonight
While the music hushes
All other sounds that trouble
His days.
If he is lucky
He will sleep tonight
In the quiet
Of Christmas peace.