Poetry

This is a poem I posted on Facebook in April 2020.

Poetry

in our disasters we are reduced to you,
you whom we forget; while life throngs with noises,
anxieties, joys, quick mental calculations
about different types of bus pass, we can glance on you
and think,
“what, in the end, does this string of words really mean?”
or,
“I know, when I was younger, this did something for me.”

But when we are brought low and hollowed out,
when our joys and securities have voted for an exit,
and our worries show us their pettiness at last
in the wake of some vast disturbance; when towers slough down,
or the banners of civil wars are raised in our midst—
in our shattered state, we find you have not abandoned us,
who abandon you in a heartbeat, oh our heartbeat.
Still dance, sung image, rhythm given meaning
and meaning rhythm, when we run home in fear
in the fire-lit cave of our skulls we become our ancestors,
feeling your pulse above the deep work of a drum.