TWO YESTERDAYS

 

My grandma’s Mason jars are now antique,

In which she canned the produce of her farm--

The peaches, beets, tomatoes; but their charm

As toys for idle children in the weeks

Of school-less summer, that fine meek

And Christian woman could not soon suspect:

No Great Depression weighed upon our necks,

Like yokes of oxen dragging plows that creak.

Instead our days were ignorant of care;

Our evenings passed like fireflies in flight,

Which we would trap inside the sturdy jars

With grass and twigs, the lid just cracked for air;

And gaze upon their struggles in the night--

Their abdomens of mystic, yellow light.

LONESOME OLD GRAVEYARD

 

These stones are here to make a wall

Between the Present and the Past;

They soothe us, like the moss that grows

Upon our speechless Epitaphs.

 

As soon as we are born we roam

This cemetery’s fateful yard,

Stoop-shouldered with our memories--

To lay them down is too too hard.

 

It’s such a park-like setting, though;

Unlike the grounds of  Buddha’s day.

What’s out of sight is out of mind--

Or so it seems to us to say.

 

Think back to ancient India,

And lay your Ego’s burden down

Where, swollen, blue, and festering,

The corpses are strewn all around.

 

Oh who could bear to see them laid,

In olden times, where hawks and crows,

Black vultures, jackals, dogs and worms

Licked meat from off their crazy bones?

 

Whose weeping eyes today have chance

To scrutinize those skeletons

Whose flesh and blood’s last remnants hang

In ragged shreds by loose tendons?

 

The undertaker primps and preens

Our loved ones like our children’s dolls:
The fear that drives this modern age

Promotes his business aims withal.

 

Compassionless, we turn our heads

From all in whom ourselves we see--

In spite of all our former lives,

Denying what we all must be.

 

For gamblers play against the odds,

And bet their bodies on the deal

With bones gone loose as tumbling dice

Cast thoughtlessly upon the Wheel.

 

The bones of hand and foot and thigh,

Of skin and pelvis, spine and shin,

Will contemplate no funerals

While lying in the rain and wind.

 

What chance have you to recognize

Your Image in that charnel field,

Stripped down to bones that rot and drift

Like dust upon the Ancient Mirror?

 

We modern folks have no such thoughts

While roaming in this world’s graveyard,

Stoop-shouldered with our memories--

To lay them down is too too hard.

 

It’s such a park like setting, though;

Unlike the grounds of yesterday.

What’s out of sight is out of mind--

Or so it seems to us to say.

 

These stones are here to make a wall

Between the Present and the Past:

They soothe us, like the moss that grows

Upon our speechless Epitaphs.

 

 

 

          ALTER EGO

  

The man I was looms over me,

Like a father teaching his son to read.

     Like a shadow cast

     From the fateful past,

He haunts me with his deeds.

He wants me to carry on his seed.

 

This man is more than history--

His inmost core a mystery

     That he disowns.

     I reap what he has sown.

My passion flows from him;

And where he ends, I must begin.

 

But when his folly shall no more

Delude me, and the Other Shore

      At last I’ve reached,--

      And from that beach

The undulating waves

His errant footprints have erased,--

 

That man will be a Parable

Of human destiny, as well:

      A lesson learned,

      Not to be spurned

By those who seek to free

Mankind from self-made misery.

 

NOT AS FOOLS WALK

  

My God, whose fault was it:

   The child’s who ran in front of me

(My automobile his last thought),

   Or mine, that I failed to see?

 

Oh, it was more my fault,

    Though he didn’t look both ways:

I sat behind the Juggernaut’s

   Grim wheel, in the parade

 

The tramples on our Paradise—

   For in its path are cast

The ignorant and helpless,

   Who writhe on broken glass.

 

The weak are crushed and maimed—

   The aged and infirm,

The homeless and insane,

   The gasoline-soaked worms.

 

Struck blind by our headlights,

   Bewildered deer are slain

While paralyzed with fright.

   The sun and moon seem stained.

 

Not only mine this guilt,

   Though I must voice its plea.

I hope one day to build

   The courage to release

 

My fingers from the wheel,

   And find somewhere to park

This sterile husk of steel,

   And circumspectly walk—

 

Not as a heedless fool,

   But as a man with eyes,

Who lives by Mercy’s rule

   And not the law of Sacrifice.