Genre
Adoring
Adoring: a daring
enduring endearing,
Declaring and sharing the caring:
A heavenly brew to keep us true
To love, how sweet the notion!
An ocean of such potion
Rains a lifetime of devotion.
Avenue of the
Saints
How low through the
hollows
Does the old road go?
Four-lane replaced forlorn,
A finger lingering, for show,
Pointing down the bypassed town,
A once-reliable pliable trail,
No longer taken, failed, forsaken
For sprawl by all save local mail.
Now shrouding in history's mystery
New bypass quickens, skirting hem
Shuns shops' kitties, hurting them,
Leaving Charles City sitting jittery
(Note: Avenue of the
Saints is the highway construction project linking
St. Louis and St. Paul. Charles City is along the way, on US 218
in northern Iowa.)
Which Spoke
Louder?
What honor might we
cast at last
Upon these poets now gone past?
Plath, Berryman, Sexton, Delmore Schwartz,
Their self-willed too-soon end aborts
Soft legacy, their epitaph
Instead engaged with death's last-laugh.
Muse dreams inspired, sought in youth to please
But yielded to mundane realities;
What intellect, what artist-heart
Fell short, pained quest for finest part,
Then cut their loss, leaving absurd
Testament to their written word:
By gas, bridge, or drink, dark suicide,
Who once proclaimed their joy their pride.
(Regarding certain
talented 20th century poets
who committed suicide...)
