Thank you for the gifts of life with you.
May I appreciate in full the beauty of our path together.
Thank you for your crimson understanding.
May I accept myself as well as you do.
Thank you for the violets of your patience.
May I still grow, no matter what is left of me.
Thank you for my weedy imperfections.
May I come to love as well as you do.
Thank you for your joyous reaching hand.
May I stand guard against deception of myself
.
A young man who signed on at Petco
had trouble there from the get-go.
He buggered a parrot,
three chimps and a ferret
before he was finally let go.
Longfellow gave
a loaf of bread
to every hungry beggar.
One day Bakunin
stopped by at noon.
He’d escaped from Siberia
and stayed till almost midnight,
anxious to possess
an autograph of Washington.
Archipelagos
of decadent blue moguls
force me to labor.
Pushing Sister Pat
down the wheelchair ramp so fast
made even God smile.
Tilting their black heads
two crows in a copper beech
spy on our green yard.
Under the maples
an army of mayapples
marches through violets.
Inching past the lynching
I sucked it up
turned away and
hugged a rocky wall.
I chose to console the living,
clutch my young red badge
and crawl.
Even at half-mast
his veins stuck out like cables
on the Brooklyn Bridge.
It seems a long stretch
for this tired old bloke
since I last kicked my heels up
or let alone spoke.
Tomorrow I’ll locate
scrawny children in tatters!
I hear what you give
is what really matters.
Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive 