Trusting the Breeze
When the breeze settles upon the
buildings
like the cat settles into
the empty box or
basket,
when the dust settles
after floating in the air
or appearing
in the shaft of light
from the window,
when suddenly the odor
of ozone in the air before the
storm
settles into the corners of
the afternoon,
then, and only then,
will I turn the page
– David Michael Jackson
***
Failure to be erudite,
failure to be clear,
to be sane,
to be worth it.
Failure to be sublime,
to say the right thing,
to do the right thing, to
live.
We live with our failures
and die with them complete.
The great ones count their failures as stepping stones
or so they say.
These poems are failures
stepping carefully on the
stones,
falling in the
water and floating downstream
like leaves.
david michael jackson May 16, 2012 editors@artvilla.com
Poems
I look at the briefcase with my
brother’s poems
I look at my manuscript
lying on the table,
alone.
and I think of other manuscripts
in closets somewhere.
Like faded flowers
in a drawer they contain
an essence of what was there.
Like faded flowers
pressed between the finger and the thumb
pressed between memory and
sensation, memory and
hope and if my fellow man were to say
“greatness, this is”
would that make the paper less
faded
***
Strange
word to start with, don’t
go there you say, don’t carry the
world on your
shoulders waiting for
something so nebulous as a
word taking you
to a rose
to a
willow tree beside the
stream of thinking.
You had something to
say,
something that mattered
in the morning of
dew covered
coolness,
melting into
silence and
birds
***