by Dana Yost
The way I’d shudder at it,
the way anger and grief
mingled and wrapped around
until they’d become a growl
of exasperation, anger manifest
in the ferocity, the flagellation of your primal strum,
the way a person would pound
a hard-clenched fist on a table
and say sorry, all, I've had enough.
As if you were tired of it, the bombs
and guns, little boys dead. How it goes ’round,
and you tire of it. How I tire of it.
The sorrow interlaced with your anger might
explain my weeps. Or is it the tender brogue,
lingered notes that cry your wounds,
what a critic called your “fierce vulnerability?”
I saw it, I heard it, even before I knew
of the deeper dark within you: my deeper
dark, too. It’s the dark we claw to escape, its hounding,
but never shall we, because to do so we’d have
to escape ourselves.
The earth took your body this week.
As long as I live, it will not take your voice.
The bombs, the guns will not take this world.
Dana Yost is a poet, author and former award-winning daily newspaper editor and writer. His most recent book is a history book 1940: Journal of a Midwestern Town, Story of an Era.
Showing posts with label elegy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elegy. Show all posts
Sunday, 28 January 2018
Thursday, 25 January 2018
OREGON: LOCAL NEWS
by Tricia Knoll
Waves of bluster rain roll down the blacktop hill.
People at the coast fled a tsunami but here
it’s rain and chances for more rain: 100%,
as if the sky knows that Ursula Le Guin
is gone and we’ll be left with her worlds
apart, a few cats, and first-edition books
we bought because they took us away,
saved not to start a pricey collection;
some things we never let go.
We took medical care into our own hands
and voted big-time to tax hospitals and insurers
to keep Medicare for people who need the most,
have the least, and from whom much was taken.
In the women’s locker room, talk took today to
old ladies’ pot parties with lessons
on what works best, the reason being
that if the old Oregon ladies are willing to stand up
to the feds, by god, someone better listen.
Ursula was one of us.
 |
Waves of bluster rain roll down the blacktop hill.
People at the coast fled a tsunami but here
it’s rain and chances for more rain: 100%,
as if the sky knows that Ursula Le Guin
is gone and we’ll be left with her worlds
apart, a few cats, and first-edition books
we bought because they took us away,
saved not to start a pricey collection;
some things we never let go.
We took medical care into our own hands
and voted big-time to tax hospitals and insurers
to keep Medicare for people who need the most,
have the least, and from whom much was taken.
In the women’s locker room, talk took today to
old ladies’ pot parties with lessons
on what works best, the reason being
that if the old Oregon ladies are willing to stand up
to the feds, by god, someone better listen.
Ursula was one of us.
Tricia Knoll has been an Oregonian since 1971 though real Oregonians make a distinction on whether you were born here or not. Sometimes it's a wild ride living on the left coast. The forests burn in the summer. The land slides in the winter. Earthquake faults are just a few miles away. Our Senators are Democrats, and the wine just keeps getting better.
Tuesday, 2 January 2018
SUE GRAFTON
by Bruce Dale Wise
So softly, Sue Grafton, among these blue days,
so softly I sing a brief song for your praise.
I'm sitting beside passing video streams;
so softly, Sue Grafton, you're gone with old dreams.
Your Kinsey Milhone is now left among words,
beneath scudding jet planes, occasional birds,
like the cac-kl-ing black grac-kles sitting on stores;
I'm thinking of mysteries, Hitchcock's and yours.
From A is for Alibi, Y's Yesterday,
from movies and ghost writers you kept at bay.
Now you have vanished and gone from the light;
Z is for Zero books you have to write.
Bruce Dale Wise is a poet, essayist, and the creator of new poetic forms. His publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms.
 |
| Sue Grafton April 24, 1940 - December 28, 2017 |
So softly, Sue Grafton, among these blue days,
so softly I sing a brief song for your praise.
I'm sitting beside passing video streams;
so softly, Sue Grafton, you're gone with old dreams.
Your Kinsey Milhone is now left among words,
beneath scudding jet planes, occasional birds,
like the cac-kl-ing black grac-kles sitting on stores;
I'm thinking of mysteries, Hitchcock's and yours.
From A is for Alibi, Y's Yesterday,
from movies and ghost writers you kept at bay.
Now you have vanished and gone from the light;
Z is for Zero books you have to write.
Bruce Dale Wise is a poet, essayist, and the creator of new poetic forms. His publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms.
Friday, 3 November 2017
LAIKA (1954 - NOVEMBER 3, 1957)
by Martin Elster
The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog. —Oleg Gazenko
We pulled you off the windy streets,
crammed you in a windless room,
stuck electrodes to your skin,
then hurled you to your doom.
Black ears alert, brown eyes alarmed,
you fought against the fearsome thrust,
heart overheating, wildly beating,
hanging on to trust.
What was this floating-feather-lightness?
Where was the man whose gentle hand
had stroked you after every test?
When will this bubble land?
Our plan was, after a week in orbit
you’d polish off the poisoned kibble.
(Your air was running out, dear friend,
but you weren’t one to quibble.)
Because of you, men gained the moon,
touched a comet, launched the Hubble.
Yet building a craft that could have brought
you back was too much trouble.
There stands a statue of a rocket,
you atop it, proud and regal.
Small Moscow stray, could you have dreamed
you’d die a wingless eagle?
 |
| Laika statue outside a research facility in Moscow (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky) via Universe Today. |
We pulled you off the windy streets,
crammed you in a windless room,
stuck electrodes to your skin,
then hurled you to your doom.
Black ears alert, brown eyes alarmed,
you fought against the fearsome thrust,
heart overheating, wildly beating,
hanging on to trust.
What was this floating-feather-lightness?
Where was the man whose gentle hand
had stroked you after every test?
When will this bubble land?
Our plan was, after a week in orbit
you’d polish off the poisoned kibble.
(Your air was running out, dear friend,
but you weren’t one to quibble.)
Because of you, men gained the moon,
touched a comet, launched the Hubble.
Yet building a craft that could have brought
you back was too much trouble.
There stands a statue of a rocket,
you atop it, proud and regal.
Small Moscow stray, could you have dreamed
you’d die a wingless eagle?
Martin Elster is a composer and serves as percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in Astropoetica, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Chimaera, and The Road Not Taken, among others, and in anthologies such as Taking Turns: Sonnets from Eratosphere, The 2012 and 2015 Rhysling Anthologies, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, and Poems for a Liminal Age.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)