Memorial Day 2021
Memorial Day is when we remember our friends
As they were…
Category: Poetry
DaddyPaw’s Letters from the CCC Camp
He found his DaddyPaw’s young adulthood
In a box of letters from New Mexico
About fighting forest fires and building fence
To the stockyards at Magdalena
Color Me Crimson
As history’s mundane toil, and epic battles ensue
It’s clear no race is exempt
From ways that are imperfect, unkempt.
To God, Who Gives Joy
You still approach the Altar as a child
As you once were, and are, and will be forever
For God will have it so, will have you so –
Enchanted by His magic – a little boy
Squirrels Without End, Amen
Whenever I take my book to the front-yard oak
The squirrel stretched from the feeder to the trunk
Flees in a seed-strewn panic across the lawn
To a farther tree, free of human menace
Arthur’s Song
It was at court our eyes first met,
Many others were there,
We had not spoken yet.
Though I conversed with others,
and from you stood apart,
Like foals to their mothers,
To you went my heart.
This Side of the Covid
Infections are up and deaths are ‘way down
Or is it that infections are down and deaths are up?
Schools must be closed and the restaurants open
Or schools must be open and restaurants closed…
My Dearest Ana
My dearest Ana,
You lied to and enslaved me
For which I bear animosity
Because of your “generosity”
My body has become an atrocity
Charity?
You were so thankful, and my friends
Were so proud of my gracious
Charity, seeing
I had aided
You…
Barney Fife! Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour
Police chiefs are costumed as admirals these days
Or as generals, with medals and eagles and stars
Peaked caps and polished boots, more Patton than Patton
In stern command of parking-lot plywood lecterns
An Unskilled Rotor-Tiller Tiller of the Soil
The morning was fresh and cool and damp and still
I wheeled the tiller into the garden patch
Fresh gasoline, then primed the little bulb
And turned the red plastic lever just so
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Shaven-headed twit in a cartoon tee
Ditched…
Colorful Carrots
Springtime is here!
So full of color and cheer!
The flowers reveal their pretty heads
Green is coming instead of brown and red
What Happened to the Guards Posted at the Tomb?
Perhaps the duty officer had it in for them:
Some privates, a corporal, maybe a sergeant
Grousing about pulling a night watch
And in a Jewish cemetery – why?
A Second Covid Easter
Last year the Holy Mass was forbidden by law
An eleventh plague blighted land and air
And so for us there was no exodus
From the brick pits in which we found ourselves
A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week
The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass
Communing With the Eternal
A meal’s prepared,
The Spirit waits to welcome them there,
Or here,
Palm Sunday Well-Sanitized
There is social distancing in Jerusalem
Mostly among Romans and Greeks and Jews
Who don’t much like each other anyway –
How is this day different from all other days?
Making Maids
I fell asleep thinking about swollen river banks – it’s
Rained for two days straight. Overnight,
Thunder rolled outside as I rolled over
In my sleep, and woke
Thinking of Moses…
When You are Chosen as Poet Laureate
Do you suppose someday you’ll see your name
In the content pages of an Oxford book
An Oxford book of verse for this or that
Among the greats (who will want your autograph)
LogoSophia Magazine 