POEM - A Great Descent

Everything begins with a great descent:
Like birth or the night that rolls out day.
I face sloping ice fields as hard as whispered truths,
This undulating white, the beard of some
Old testament God, bending to no one,
Forgiving no one, wagging a starched
Finger at me.

Hold it gently – this view – on a teabag string.
Dip it into bubbling sunlight, steep it long and still.
Eventually, you witness how summer
Has been blanched out completely,
How it leaves a lack like a great yawn.
Winter is that season all the others talk about
Behind her back in smug, furtive tones of exclusion.
But stand outside, in paper mâché light
And you understand how this is a season
Of shortened things – you dare not stay out
For too long because of how much
It takes out of you.
Mailboxes, benches, street signs -
Even living things have left exteriors behind
And what is left is the “thing-ness” of things,
Cutouts - cardboard barricades,
Bereft of juices, the bone but not the fat.

Everything begins with a great descent:
Like night brandishing a thin lipped
Pinkness, who kisses me like some winsome stranger
So hard
That I blush from embarrassment,
Tightly holding what I hope to be.

POEM - Flood

Yesterday, the icy waters from up north
melted and gave way.
Dams, unable to gird themselves,
split, and water ambled
Snake-like through the valley
seeking gravity's blessing
in a race to tranquility.

Yesterday, the waters of your tears from up north
melted and gave way,
dissolving a frozenness that has gripped me
for so long that I am unable to sew two words
together to even make one coherent thought.
These waters move with no grace at all,
That we are left so helpless by the hurt
that there is nothing left with
which we might defend ourselves.

Today, the morning arrives earlier.
The light is sharper and air cleaner.
Today, even the sad, naked trees
Want to dance.


M C Biegner

POEM - The Gravity of a Friend

I could be completely deaf
But still, I would hear the shrill
Whistle of the wind as it bores
Right through the hole I carve
Out of me for you.
More like a shelf, really.
One to hang your homelessness on to,
One to hang all that doubt
You carry about in bulging pockets.

If you were a cartoon,
I could never have even dreamed you
Up out of thin air!
I lack the imagination,
I lack the mastery of language
That is required:
Verbs would have insufficient muscle;
Modifiers would blanch in comparison
To what you are really like!

From other galaxies, we are just
Overlapping points of gravity, studded
Like nails driven into walls
That hold everything up, when all it
Wants to do is collapse.