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Pat Jordan
DIRGE So many mothers have walked this way Burdened with the flag of her son, her country,
Holding her grief away from herself, Waiting to meet it at midnight hour. Burdened with the flag of her son, her country,
Holding tight to the contents of her heart, Waiting to meet it at midnight hour, A pilgrim in this silent maze of tombs. Holding tight to the contents of her heart She feels her foot impose upon the grass, A pilgrim in this silent maze of tombs. The wonder is that stains can fade. She feels her foot impose upon the grass Which does not know the world has stopped. The wonder is that stains can fade And dew will weep upon the grass
Which does not know the world has stopped. Holding her grief away from herself, The dew will weep upon the grass, So many mothers have walked this way. (originally
posted January 31, 2008)
WHERE
WE ARE GOING Some grow into ourselves late in life, flowering near frost, giving up our supposed calling to find our soul which we had feared to be a thing of myth. Wearing the mantle like new Easter clothes, we feel obligated to gather grains of sand to form a pebble to fling across the sky. Once a poem is airborne, stone becomes spaceship aiming for an undiscovered planet, the cloak falls gentler about the shoulder, and we ponder why it hung in the closet so long unworn.
(Originally posted April 13, 2008)
NOCTURNE The universe is
so much greater than we that
even on the crest of our mountain
the stars are untouchable. But
we are closer than ever to
Mars, to bright and faithful
Venus, moving in programmed
synchronicity. You whistle a
Bach minuet into the vast
nothing and everything of space, and I
hum along. We take turns making up
nonsense lyrics to torture the
innocent melody until, wits
spent, we rest against one another,
each bearing some of the other's
weight, in a night of expansive
counterpoint. |