April  2003 National Poetry Month

Question Being

 

What last mystical region

Lies untouched by gross reason?

The passer-by, the pedestrian

On a tear, dashes in, makes

No sense of this realm and

Repairs to his sweet routine.

 

What warm hinter light goes

Unnoticed by a glance and glare

World staring into the heat 

of the sun’s dissolving tracery?

To the soul of weariness each

Escaped ray Is a shared gem.

 

What safe harbor breeze

Flies unsavory? Flared nostrils 

In a race with a tide pitched sea,

The ship’s haul of black wet

Gleam and muscle, all stink of

Work and the pulley’s squeal.

 

What cool blessing of mist

Rolls in to fog the window,

Quiet the brain? The nerves

Reel out like sheets of sailboats,

Bobbing on the solemn eddy

Of an oil slick daylight’s end.

 

What round eye sees with no

Ambiguous rose or lotus bed

Of erogenous lilies? It gathers 

Symbolic being from a listening 

Post at the backyard portal 

Where the garden pots glisten.

©Jimmy Warner, 2003