Love Lost: The Loss of True Love Poem
Silence does not befit me
The loss of true love
does not the tongue
encourage.
The irises are in bloom
and I have
lost another love.
Sad roses and doves in
the rain
call to explain.
I am an old pine dwarf
clinging to the the rocks of
a minor mountain.
Crying in the wilderness.
Love Lost, The Loss of True Love copyright 2008
my heels click on the cobbles
as i wander down this dark alley
what’s behind leers
what’s ahead seems to menace
there are doorways
with hawkers selling their wares
do this, believe that
selling not the truth but conformity
but instead of safety
i put more doors behind
creating more leers
and walk forward into what
what is up ahead in the dark
it doesn’t help to squint
each door hidden til too late
and the last door possibly oblivion
my heels click on the cobbles
as i wander down this dark alley
what’s behind leers
what’s ahead menaces
Incantations
Nan Arbuckle
Names catch and hold-Caney Springs, Yell,
Belfast, Delina, Anes. Chanted by some side road
farmer they offer keys, a half-forgotten cult,
hidden among hills, circled round with walls
of limestone, forgotten tribute for some
squat deity of brush in a hillside devil’s den.
Church names sound the same, Bible mixing
old country~county names,
Head Springs, Bethberei, Gill’s Chapel-
once white churches forgotten down some lane,
destroyed with graves overgrown, yet
magic names still, deep in my county memory,
charmed as ghost-lights at Chapel Hill.
There was a time one year, late November,
a child among children with identities time lost,
I gathered hickory nuts, ankle-deep in gold
brown leaves behind an old road church
its frame silent one gray-cold Saturday.
In those woods there were thick, stiff grapevines,
bare and brown like webs in the trees
in the woods where we would not go.
And probably there were snakes, left from summer,
cold and still from the fall, hidden in rock slits,
waiting for children’s feet to step close.
And surely where were spirits, hanging like clouds
ceiling the day low and watching
our small-gloved hands
gathering nuts as we stayed anxiously back,
away from those woods There surely were spirits,
circling the church with the memory dark name.
Names a shorthand now, odd hieroglyphs
call up visions-Holt’s Corner, railroad tracks-
Farmington, ghosts from the gray blood-
Possum Trot, Christmas sparklers in a century farmhouse,
chanted slow the names could conjure vagrant souls,
devils or angels I will not guess which,
Perhaps only rough-handed farm people, wraiths
in duckhead overalls and gingham check.
Stamped as newsprint, the names echo magic for me,
miles from country churches now,
long years from the fall
of hickory nuts, wrist thick grapevines,
and low look of watchful clouds
that can haunt a child farther
and longer than any whisper from a rebel dead.
About the author:
My friend — by Andy Derryberry
Compact Biography
Osama “thinks” I’m a running dog infidel who should be murdered
Some of my Christian brothers “think” I’m a stinking low life liberal
Occasionally ‘ol Harley boys “think” I’m a punk a** s**t for riding a Japanese bike
People younger than I am may “think” I’m past my day and should just go away an not burden them
A good percentage of my friends and relatives “think” collateral damage is perfectly OK
American’s seem to “think” that those designated winners are superior to those designated losers
A multitude of modestly intelligent people “think” they know how it is I came to be here punching these keys
A great gaggle of people “think” the truth is entirely separate from the facts
A high school pal “thought” I was too independent
What do I think?
You don’t wanna know
Our concern with environment cannot be reduced to what can be used, to what can be grasped. Environment includes not only the inkstand and the blotting paper, but also the impenetrable stillness in the air, the stars, the clouds, the quiet passing of time, the wonder of my own being. I am an end as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a means. My view of the world and my understanding of the self determine each other. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the world becomes a market place for you. The complete manipulation of the world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.
Humankind will not die out for lack of information, but for we may perish for want of appreciation.
In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
– Abraham Joshua Heschel
http://heschel.org.il/eng/Heschel