poems

The Prisoner

If you have not a bird inside you,
      You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
      A beak and a bleeding wing,
      Then you have reason to sing.

If merely you are clever
      With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
      The veins of our singing-birds,
      With blades of glinting words.

Yet if a Song, without ending,
      Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
      Tear through your lungs for breath,
      Sing—or you bleed to death.

—Louis Golding (1895–1958), Sorrow of War, 1919

May you

May you lose a lot that matters to you
      a few times in your life—

May you make and remake and
      remake yourself over and again
      and burn yourself right down
      to ashen smoking embers
      of bone and grit and soul—

So that you may always know
      the pain of rock bottom
      the freedom of rebirth
      the hope of revival
      the gift of perspective
      the awareness of your strength—

May you lose but live again.

—Terri Guillemets

In a hospital

In a hospital
it’s difficult to listen
to sad, scary sounds
      “code blue” on intercoms
      wailing, grieving families
      beep-beep-beep of machines —
But if you listen
more carefully
you can hear
      the sound of hope
      of healing, love, and support
      caring, confident voices
      of nurses and doctors and staff
      the din and melodies of
      our imperfect and indispensable
      healthcare plexus at work

—Terri Guillemets

43.47943

Specks of universe in my soul,
flurries of God in my head.
Heart ticks away, doing its job—
whispering poetry all the while.
Enlightenment flickers subtly
from old gray half-burnt wicks.

—Terri Guillemets