Published
Thursday February 21, 2008
POETRY BY
Michael
Healey
©
Michael Healey 2008
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Thursday 21-Feb-2008 13:30
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RETORT
MAGAZINE ISSN 1445-7164 |
Range
finding
If
only kind pity could
Choke my indolent spleen
Like old Donne here before me
Thought beyond experience
Here in twickenham garden
I contemplate the mandrakes
Yet wisdom commands me well
Be still, wider yet, open these eyes.
I
still think of you my bowman
As I still think of England
The east pier in Brighton
Now a charcoal skeleton
Was it purified by fire
Attesting for posterity?
To whom then, but the living
Or to him that’s yet to come?
And
still your question lingers
Impudent pink wee finger
To this I raise a second
Like archers did on Avignon
So you thus oppose a third
But mandible claw grasps not
Rather thumbing though unheard
My fibers, dust and greasy hair.
So
war and paperwork ensue
And bowmen’s ranks swallow
Old targets art, thus I aim
By these fingers draw a smile
Still with strength enough to die
Then I might reconsider
Numb fingers in a quiver
Yet your hands were always bigger
Than mine.
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Donne
captains a ship of fools
Let me not knit my net too fine
Thus trap small fish or venal sin.
Neither casting in too deep
As to ensnare a leviathan.
But
guided by shared impotence
Within the sea of what contains us.
To retrace love reconsidered
Then choose what there remains of.
If
only memory could thus divine
The middle point of our lost night
With plumb and sextant plot the sky
Span, count, and wait, upcoming light.
Yet
if instinct which haunts foresight
Should trace shadow before it falls
Then circumspect mind must navigate
Through the communion of lost fools.
So
turned and prayed to permanence
Both cartographer and firstmate
One skyward eye was cast above
Its twin trimming to the winds fate.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Confessions
of a gardener
I
tell you then far from pride or zeal
Little hope is left for these ones
Tell
me of the conceit of adulthood
So called, I now in the primavera of free license,
To
old to be precocious, to young to be reproved
As traitor too the burden of authentic failure
What
is considered health hitherto
Must end then there in sickness
Procession
of years ever content
To lift ironies bar when outgrown of its uses
The
course safeguarded from undue reverence
For the peat-pit of age an jaundiced obligation
But
like hot house flowers super ceding growth
In the well set plots and unique privacy of humid air,
Yet
never draw so broad a breath to circumscribe life
Thus prefigure death.
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Postscription
The
rumors not true, I had not raped mother Gia,
We consummated a shared breath in silence
And of the children? our illegitimate dreams
She spawned a ten acre spread
On the outskirts of suburbia.
|
Thursday 21-Feb-2008 13:30
|
RETORT
MAGAZINE ISSN 1445-7164 |
Michael
Healey
©
Michael Healey 2008
