Poetry that touches your heart.

[Trazalca]

Garrison Keillor can read aloud a set of assembly instructions for a kid's bike,
and make it profound. He read this on his radio vignette this afternoon,
and I got teary-eyed.
It hit both marks on my parenthood, and where I am in life now.

The Faces of Children
by Elizabeth Spires

Meeting old friends after a long time, we see
with surprise how they have changed, and must imagine,
despite the mirror's lies, that change is upon us, too.

Once, in our twenties, we thought we would never die.
Now, as one thoughtlessly shuffles a deck of cards,
we have run through half our lives.

The afternoon has vanished, the evening changing
us into four shadows mildly talking on a porch.
And as we talk, we listen to the children play
the games that we played once. In joy and terror,
they cry out in surprise as the seeker finds the one in hiding,
or in fairytale tableau, each one is tapped and turned

to stone. The lawn is full of breathing statues who wait
to be changed back again, and we can do nothing but stand
to one side of our children's games, our children's lives.

We are the conjurors who take away all pain,
and we are the ones who cannot take away the pain at all.
They do not ask, as lately we have asked ourselves,

Who was I then? And what must I become?
Like newly minted coins, their faces catch
the evening's radiance. They are so sure of us,

more sure than we are of ourselves. Our children:
who gently push us toward the end of our own lives.
The future beckons brightly. They trust us to lead them there.


If you know any poems that mean something to you, please share.

[robert eggleton]

Goth

pity the person
who
lives in languish
enjoys
peace by proxy
and
joy with jaundice
has
horrific unhappiness of humanness
gotten
greedy for grief
lost
love by lust
secretes
secretly suicidal essence
abstains while
waiting with writhing
withdraws
courageous cowardice
reaches
revelations reality
pleads
psychotropic poison please
demands
death as destiny
gets
a cold hot dog

"Pernicious Benevolence" -- A Lacy Dawn Adventures Project
by Robert Eggleton