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Dave Bonta
observing a horse
how it minds nothing
is naked and content
like a mad god
what will become of people
full of sad stories
everybody sick
and never a physician
which sea would help us fear
what we have done
which curse
might trouble us
so small and thin
our ear bones are
our usual business
is sickness:
all the hurt
to all our families
a great feast of work
cards to the blind
This fallen fruit:
a small heart
full of sickness,
my sandwich’s god.
I live in black,
the color of oil:
oy! I was sick
and oy! I was well,
found but missed
all places here
with letters from home
to home.
an owl calling
in the garden
I go out and vomit
There are so many things I have to say
But my body is a cage
I dropped them off along the way
And called myself a sage
I really wish I could have stayed
Or waited just a little while
But I'm frivolous
Ostentatious
Presumptuous
Sick
I'm going to be sick
Sickness brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:
Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole
World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed
Against a soul?
I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my
funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding herself, and her grief!
Waving slowly before me, pushed into the dark,
Unseen my hands explore the silence, drawing the
bark
Of my body slowly behind.
Nothing to meet my fingers but the fleece of night
Invisible blinding my face and my eyes! What if
in their flight
My hands should touch the door!
What if I suddenly stumble, and push the door
Open, and a great grey dawn swirls over my feet,
before
I can draw back!
What if unwitting I set the door of eternity wide
And am swept away in the horrible dawn, am gone
down the tide
Of eternal hereafter!