You are currently browsing the daily archive for September 6th, 2006.
Two hurricanes past: Charley and Frances.
A third is yet to come. The tropical islands,
drenched already, count various losses.
Floridians brace for another deep rain,
but Ivan heads instead toward New Orleans,
where flowing booze makes jazz king,
yearly, the Catholics wear beads and masks.
It misses—making landfall close but elsewhere.
We live off to the north—a hundred miles from
the sea. The wind and the sun and deciduous trees
paint an Indian Summer here. Clouds roll in
like huge erasers: Eerie, and long before the rain.
Meanwhile, dancing-shadows bob and twinkle:
The eye of today is its sunlight.
Silver jewels, like the white-hot stars in the
blowing grass, are coming and going.
first published in Right Hand Pointing
Often we remain silent when we need to speak. Without words, it is hard to love well. When we say to our parents, children, lovers, or friends: “I love you very much” or “I care for you” or “I think of you often” or “You are my greatest gift,” we choose to give life.
It is not always easy to express our love directly in words. But whenever we do, we discover we have offered a blessing that will be long remembered. When a son can say to his father, “Dad, I love you,” and when a mother can say to her daughter, “Child, I love you,” a whole new blessed place can be opened up, a space where it is good to dwell. Indeed, words have the power to create life.
Distant stars now grace the darkness.
And six farmers under a quarter moon
kneel but do not speak.
By day, the sun burns through barren fields.
The old women shout,
“Dirt to mud, mud to dirt.” The barefoot children
stomp a rain-dance.
Silence follows begging in this hell-dry penumbra,
which is not to say what the villagers now believe.
first published in The Bohemain Rag
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