Sunday #27

 Euthanasia


death was born on a slab
of cold metal, swirled streaks
from years of hard scrubbing,

the angel of mercy with twig
fingers, bony and brown,
delicate upon the matted fur.

his assistants were gentle, too,
with practiced looks of pain
and commiseration.  perhaps

it never got easier with time.
we spread the ashes in the woods,
adding to the ghosts that roamed

through the decaying leaves
and fragile trillium flowers,
past the spot where I built

my first fort out of sticks,
and the rusting cans left
after the farmer's target practice.

Sunday #26

a morning bus ride when the world was cold


morning breaks and reveals
that the great spider
had stolen into the night
only to leave
the waking world a delicate
web of ice and glass.

some kids left hand prints
on the frosty windows.
others wrote messages
to the passing commuters.

I wiped away the haze
to reveal my own view
of the fragile scene
and savored the moments
before the sun melted
away the last mysteries
of the world.

Sunday #25

Here's part 5 of the ongoing series of poems that me and fragondruit are doing.  This time, I borrowed two lines from her most recent poem (which, in turn, borrowed two from my last poem).  Those two lines are in italics.

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer" (rbannal)

part 2: "Morning in Late September" (fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)
part 4: "Crash on M-131" (fragondruit)

on being a raindrop


some fall upon overpasses
deep into the autumn, when the winds
tell of the wintery future
and freeze before they all turn
to snow.

others are blessed with an embrace
at the end of their journey,
acceptance into the community--
a pool, lake, stream,
others like them, until they
no longer remember being
falling raindrops.

one raindrop protests--
    gravity lurks in the darkness
    of a never-ending elevator shaft,
    and slips his firm grip
    up from the depths and clutches
    my jellied knees
    and tugs until my eyes
    spin, searching for focus
    as the light pulses
    into a steady dimness,
    obscuring the line
    between safety
    and the rushing fall.

    I leave my vocal chords along
    the side of the road.  I am naked.
    thunder announced my descent,
    but I am diminished and impure,
    unworthy of a booming legacy,
    destined only to seep beneath
    the oily pavement, the gravel
    strewn upon the lingering grass.

    with time, I may rise again,
    only to fall, but the earth
    chains me beneath its skin,
    and I am lost, no longer
    a raindrop.

Sunday #24

This is my first (well, second?) contribution to a current experiment with my ol' friend fragondruit over at idontremembermyurl.  It's an exercise in stealing lines, in a way, so the line I stole from her recent poem "Morning in Late September" is italicized below.  Links to the first two poems in the experiment are below:
 
Part 1:  "Love Song for the End of Summer"


Part 2: "Morning in Late September"

And here's part three--


A New Sunset


three years spent watching the same horizon--
each sunset was beautiful, with colors
one could swear only existed before in dreams,

or the soft life of an impressionist, fine
feather strokes until all the edges
eroded, and the coating of dust was an experiment

in shading.  but repeated wonders grow mundane,
so, like a jaded museum docent drenched in Monet,
I turned away from each evening unimpressed.

to deny such beauty is another tiny death--
but a new horizon, obscured by buildings,
presents a different perspective as the late
sky erupts in fiery reds, volcanic and heavenly,
and the grey-scale patina choking the air fades.

the right angle of light cast upon a familiar
scene can breathe a shuddering wind through
the formless grass, shake what has not moved

since the artist placed his final touches,
and engulf the ends of the world in a new
warmth that spreads, dancing along each nerve,

until once-closed eyes again acknowledge
the perfection of the spiraling colors
surrounding the daily departure of the Sun.

Sunday #23

I don't usually post revisions here, but this is almost a week late, so here we go.


Love Song for the End of Summer


green-gold canopies catch the last
remaining light and shrivel, brown
and red, in time.  not yet,

not until the storms have had
their say, and the air shrinks
and breathes a final sigh of warmth.

summer's death is a welcome
one.  when the heat drains
from the child of a warm spring,

and the crisp fall husk descends,
the festering green will give way
to the calm embrace of earth colors

until the white blanket spreads
and we start our journey again.