Daily Archives: March 7, 2003

White Rhinoceros

for poet dan

Ground into a powder, that massive horn
is much prized as an aphrodisiac;
but the pale creature to whom it is born
uses it for a different attack.

Against the backdrop of the setting sun
his silhouette stark in the growing gloom,
there is little from which he turns to run;
The lesser veldt denizens all make room,

knowing well he is quite easily riled.
He knows his only enemy is time,
a slow, creeping foe that rarely fights fair.

To that great challenge, he is reconciled –
a battle with a primordial slime
that swallows whole all things without a care.

07 MAR 2003

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The Universe

for LJ user ldy

For those who praise abstinence, the big bang
seems quite an obscene and vulgar notion –
that the entire world would just simply hang
together, making circular motions

without a divine rudder seems absurd.
But the cosmos doesn’t need approval;
it did just fine before the written word,
coping with addition and removal

of all kinds of humorless parasites
with a simple shrug and a hearty laugh,
finding beauty in each new thing in turn,

never bothering with property rights,
only possibilities, knowing half
would gladly sing along, or want to learn.

07 MAR 2003

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Cancer

There are times when new growth is a bad thing.
When that dark shadow creeps into your life,
touching healthy cells with its withering
hand, defying the surgeon’s careful knife

as it gains momentum and saps your strength,
the possibility of loss is real;
You start measuring time in smaller lengths,
and hope that at the end, you can still feel

good enough to laugh, and somehow cheat death,
sense the hair growing back under your wig
and feel warm sun on your radiated bones.

Then you use all your courage to draw breath,
thinking, “Those other things I thought so big,
how very small they all seem to have grown.”

07 MAR 2003

for Verian Thomas

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A Willow Tree

Bending down to touch the path at my feet,
do you shed your warm tears for me and mine,
letting the bitter salt blend with the sweet
fragrance of the surrounding oak and pine?

What sad piper lays down his head to sleep
beneath the stretching limbs of your embrace,
while dreams of a troubled, maddened world keep
the lines of sorrow etched in his still face?

Amidst the green strands of your falling hair
is a tenuous fortress that protects
the heart throughout these mysterious times.

Are you mourning those who seem lost, out there,
those heart-sick souls society neglects?
Do you shed those warm tears for me and mine?

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user stephanielynch

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A Druid Reflects on Patrick’s Sainthood

I won’t march in your drunken green parades,
nor think of your name when I spy clover;
I’m tired of these cruel lies and the charades –
it won’t be my eyes your wool pulls over.

For I am of the breed of snakes you fought
and drove from Erin’s shores in ignorance,
when with a blessing of my blood you brought
your cursed words of sin to my Beltane dance.

You stole my history, my country’s soul,
and yet, your patriarchal leaders boast
that somehow you redeemed our sacred isle.

May your eyes be lain with live, burning coal;
in the Hell you created may you roast.
I shall think of that scene in March, and smile.

07 MAR 2003

for Live Journal user estersin

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Getting Older

Maybe it gets a bit harder to rise
at dawn after a few pints late at night;
and those few pounds get harder to disguise,
making a climb up the stairs no delight.

Maybe your ears aren’t as sharp as they were,
yet some echoes you never can forget;
so many things fade away in a blur,
except her voice’s sound the day you met.

The new ways of youth seem so strange and wild;
and you think often of different times –
when the world was young and full of verve,

and could not fathom you with a grandchild.
Each passing year seems more and more sublime
as like our memories, we are preserved.

07 MAR 2003

for LJ user dougs

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