Poems that you love

[Lizzie]

Here is another one by an old workshop friend:

Neanderthal Bone Flute
by Rose Kelleher

“...if it really is a flute, it provides significant evidence that Neanderthals may have been the equal of Homo Sapiens in the evolution of humankind.”
                      — Wikipedia.com, Divje Babe

Let it be a flute. Let some young man,
perhaps red-haired, have carved it just for fun.
Or better yet, to serenade someone:
one of the jut-chinned girls, not of his clan,
a stranger from the east. And let his genes
thrive still in solitary types, the shy
who fidget when you look them in the eye,
the tongue-tied, who must woo by other means.

Ignore the new genetic tests that say
the girl rejected him, that winter came
and spear could not compete with bow and arrow;
that want, or slaughter, whittled him away
because his ways and ours were not the same.
Let bone be flute, the music in our marrow.

This is wonderful, Milo. Thanks for sharing. I hope it's a flute too

---

It’s Like This By Stephen Dobyns

for Peter Parrish

Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible
.....cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark,
.....the cord that makes him always dissatisfied,
.....has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes.

He greets his family, looking for himself in their eyes,
.....but instead he sees shorter or taller men, men with
.....different degrees of anger or love, the kind of men
.....that people who hardly know him often mistake
.....for him, leaving a movie or running to catch a bus.

He has a job that he goes to. It could be at a bank
.....or a library or turning a piece of flat land
.....into a ditch. All day something that refuses to
.....show itself hovers at the corner of his eye,
.....like a name he is trying to remember, like
.....expecting a touch on the shoulder, as if someone
.....were about to embrace him, a woman in a blue dress
.....whom he has never met, would never meet again.
.....And it seems the purpose of each day’s labor
.....is simply to bring this mystery to focus. He can
.....almost describe it, as if it were a figure at the edge
.....of a burning field with smoke swirling around it
.....like white curtains shot full of wind and light.

When he returns home, he studies the eyes of his family to see
.....what person he should be that evening. He wants to say:
.....All day I have been listening, all day I have felt
.....I stood on the brink of something amazing.
.....But he says nothing, and his family walks around him
.....as if he were a stick leaning against a wall.

Late in the evening the cord around his neck draws him to bed.
.....He is consoled by the coolness of sheets, pressure
.....of blankets. He turns to the wall, and as water
.....drains from a sink so his daily mind slips from him.
.....Then sleep rises before him like a woman in a blue dress,
.....and darkness puts its arms around him, embracing him.
.....Be true to me, it says, each night you belong to me more,
.....until at last I lift you up and wrap you within me.

Holy Christ, this is a good one.

I wish there was a slow-clap emoticon.

---

The Man on the Hotel Room Bed
...
~Galway Kinnell

Well, thank goodness I'm not feeling suicidal today; this might have pushed me off the cliff.

This line:
"Love is the religion that bereaves the bereft."
So simple, so complex.

Everyone's waiting for you to post a poem, you know that right?

No pressure

There's a Suicide Awareness Month thread, if you feel so inclined to contribute I jest, but it's actually a good one. I've contributed myself.

Glad you like the poem this time