StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. L

Bugles call from crumbling spires,
Voices argue around dim fires,
Candles struggle, their wicks consumed,
A fading song drifts along the wind
As night falls once more again.

White crests shatter against the cliffs
Beneath the loud echo of seabird cries,
Sand crabs burrow into rocky earth
While a storm slowly forms and the poet
Scribbles her notes just off the horizon.

Ages from now,
When I am an old and dying woman,
I will ask Anh to come do my nails
So at least something on me will look good
When I lie waiting to be cremated.

Anh laughed when I told her,
Then smiled, then grew silent
As we both calculated
How many years from now
That might be.

So I found myself checking the ring finger
Of a youngish, good looking man
Sitting across the aisle, talking on his cell
Last night on the Metro going home;
Not that I intended on marrying him
Or even going to bed with him, but,
For that moment, it seemed important
To know if he was single and available
If the train should break down
And we found ourselves arm in arm
Trying to keep warm long after
Night had fallen along the rail tracks.

I was writing early this morning
And I seem to have used up
All of my words, a day's worth
Of nouns and verbs that has left me
Sitting here quietly since I finished;
With little else available, I write
About my grievous lack of words..

My high school will graduate
Its 135th class this year,
All of us Brothers' boys and girls,
Some of us are priests,
Some of us are agnostics,
Some of us are dead in battlefields
Around the world,

The best and the brightest a classical
Catholic education could offer,
Believers, non-believers, mothers,
Fathers, teachers, doctors, and scientists,
Every occupation within our rather ambitious reach,
Including one pretty good poet
Practicing her craft off the Shenandoah.

The old world has broken,
The new one, still in fragments,
Errant knights cross the jagged landscape
Resplendent in their sultry armor,
Claiming each to be our next Arthur;
Year after year, an endless parade
Of volunteers who would be king
Without a single concern
Where Excalibur might lie.

After eight hours of mist and rain,
The sky mocks us now with 15 minutes
Of sunshine along the horizon
Before continuing its descent to
Starless night, working its slow way
To the questionable promise
Of another November morning.

Upon a star the future rests,
The world revolves, the planets turn;
Upon our brains humanity depends
To guide us through this continuum.

The universe continues, life goes on
After Homo Sapiens is gone;
We must be off on up the rabbit hole,
The heavens wait for no one.

John Lennon is dead,
Thirty years haven't changed that,
John never had a chance to become an old man;
I'm sorry about that, I would have liked
To have heard the music, but then I'd like to have
My dead grandfather visit me during the holidays,
Perhaps with Grandma and some handmade ravioli,
I would want my Great Aunt Rosalee to be there,
I haven't seen her in fifty years at the least
-- It's just not in the cards and I've moved on,
So it goes.

The world feels later than it is dark,
The digits semi-frozen on the clock;
Days will pass before midnight comes
While meteors, like comets,
Hang in space unconsumed:
How shall moon and woman exist
When the hours refuse to glow?