Spring begins
Softly
New leaves bud
Slowly
New greens show
Gently
No flowers yet
Just many soft shades of green
Awaken my eyes and soul
Quietly
Fall ends
Softly
Old leaves fall
Slowly
Fall colors fade
Gently
Most flowers gone
Green, gold, red, orange, gray, brown
Caress my eyes and soul
Quietly
She will come, I
imagine
to my deathbed
once she knows I
cannot talk
She will cry, hold my
hand
and whisper
once more with feeling
I love you
And she will mean it
because
she can love the you
just not the I
So she will wait
until
the inconvenient I
dies.
(A ditty sung to the tune, of course, of America the Beautiful)
Oh, pitiful for ignorance
For endless waves of doubts
For purple anger’s truculence
And foolish people’s shouts
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And stop the dumb lest we succumb
From sea to shining sea.
Curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it
How everywhere we see nature reviving
As we humans abide in restless peace
Decaying bodies rest in trucks
Outside a Brooklyn funeral home
While the air clears of smog
In cities throughout the world
Empty planes rest on tarmac
In nearly abandoned airports
While dolphins and fish swim
In cleaner Venetian canals
Basketball nets rested slack
Throughout this new March madness
While a fox, not of the human variety
Investigates Downing Street
Shopkeepers and schoolchildren rest at home
Perhaps not content, but in something like stillness
While an elk peers in the window
Of a closed shop in Banff
We humans may rest only restlessly
And, for some, resentfully
But much else in the world
Seems to rest in new-found peace.
If only we could learn the secret
If only we did not need death
To teach us how to
Requiescat in pace
Butsy's Blog 