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Humanity (choose your own adventure)

Rescue

Can we reach our better side
bringing hard work to new visions
or are we only fight or flight?

Thoughts and prayers sent up the flue
papering over our divisions
all the hate we thought was through

We are made of contradiction
making peace is part of us
but fighting wars is our tradition

We are conflicted, we are still one
a little hope would be a plus
it seems so long ere the day is done

We can act with malice and spite
or press forgiveness to our hearts
fighting upwards to the light

Isolation in a divided nation
our brains are made for social smarts
stewing in our own frustration

All alone in our four walls
will our future be secure
drifting sadly through drafty halls

Turn to the very last page
willful pique or mindless cure
will it be peace or curdled rage?

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A Dead Star

Hajis traveling, halted
To whet crows’ feet.
We’d grown too old
Squinting at the sun.

The pilgrimage made
Strangers bedfellows,
And marriages to a cause
If not each other.

But we spoke the same
Inarticulate tongue
That can only be
Transcribed by heartlight,
Illuminated by hands,
Onto the soft vellum,
Leaving indelible ink
On ephemeral skin.

Our love was a dead star,
Over before we knew it.
But it shone through us
Even after. Ever after.

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The Child Coming

Endless Road

The midwife said,
At some point
In labor, all women
Believe they’ll die.

The terror creeps in.
The heart contracts,
Expels all its hopes
Into the child coming.

Curling her courage,
To speak the fear.
If I die, tell him,
I’d do it again.

Through soul seizure,
And corporal torsion,
Now only the tears
move with grace.

A cry rents the room.
Capitulating, stitching,
Resuscitating her
Wrecked body.

It wasn’t the labor.
It was the battle
To give life-
And yet retain it.

One day, he’ll feel
The same love-terror.
Not for his mother.
But for another.

A mother knows
No expectation
Of receipt. Only
Love paid forward.

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The Gravity of the Situation

History was made today.
You can feel the gravity when five petabytes of information,
Become a single pixelated digital image-
Burning like the Eye of God!

Now we have seen over the brink,
A brilliant mass of high-speed particles,
Illuminating the dark shadow- Black on black!

Accretion Disk and Event Horizon,
Dance with each other in a cosmic Tango-
Whirling Dervishes in space!

Einstein, Sagan and Hawkins never saw,
But always felt,
This hole that falls forever,
Because mass warps space and slows time.

Perhaps, we have seen our future,
Or maybe, finally, Vishnu.
For we have seen the power that is gravity,
And its burning brilliance,
Is become as Death,
The Destroyer of Worlds.

Yet this death is vital as the central focus,
Around which galaxies and life congregate,
In space and time with mass.

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Recovery

National Cathedral

I’m in recovery.
I sat down to write a poem about the injuries I’ve sustained,
Both the physical and the mental,
How they slow me down and hamper me,
From being what I once was.
But halfway through I wrote it anew,
For the aches and pains I carry,
Are the marks of a life well-lived.
I wanted to give my scars special meaning,
But I’m not sure that much is true.
My limp and my aches are constant reminders,
Of the miles I’ve covered,
And the victories and losses,
But mostly they are ghostlike memories,
Now etched forever into my being.