StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XXI

There is an opossum
Dead center on the asphalt;
Cars pass to either side,
Trying not to rehit him.

I watch perhaps a dozen
Before I pull the bloody body
Off road to the gutter
Where the crows will make
Quite good use of him.

A young possum, lean and half size,
Who leaves no descendents
To duplicate his mistake
Calculating the time-space equation.

There's a point where you let
A man just be a man,
Where you focus on his needs
Instead of just your own,
Even if that means sitting next to him
At a football game in January
Instead of watching it at home
On your 60 inch HD screen.

There are times when he must act brave,
Even if how he acts is foolhardy, just as
There are times uou want him to hold you
When you are feeling particularly blue.
Besides who else will take the garbage out
After the snow has been falling for hours
Or volunteer to drive from Washington to Florida
While you nap in the seat beside him?

The trouble with dying
Is by the time it happens,
You don't know you're dead:
No fare thee well or catch you later,
One moment the light is on,
The next, the light is gone
And you're out of here,
Bye bye, toodaloo, so long.

Across from me on corridor three,
Near the cafeteria on the second floor,
A white haired rear admiral (lower half)
Watches our returning wounded,
Accompanied by their young wives,
Their children, and their aging parents,
Walk and roll past their service family
In some ancient sacramental ritual
That predates the civilized finery
We drape our moments and better angels.

This sunny morning, the admiral and I participate
In a ritual profession of the warriors' ethos:
We serve the people of the United States,
Americans pledging our lives to life, liberty,
And the primacy of our Constitution;
Placing our sacred mission above all else,
Refusing to accept defeat, never quitting
Until our blood has flowed back across the earth,
And always, like this bright April morning
That burns itself deep into our antique memory,
Never leaving a fallen comrade no matter
What the cost may be to both flesh and soul,
Even as our tears freely flow.

Dark cliche clouds the horizon,
Threatening the serenity of the rising starlight;
Lightning and thunder rolls over the fading sunset,
Hunkering down both squirrels and cardinals.

This too may pass, the rain all slip away,
The rattle and flash miss all and everyone;
Distant ozone still unsettles the border collie
Who knows too well the storm gods' powers:

He would rather face them one on one
Than wait out the vagaries of Virginia weather.

If we have souls,
So too must the chimp,
The gorilla and orangatan,
All of us great apes.

What god would deny our hairy brothers,
Our slack breasted sisters in evolution?
What deitific conceit could refuse eternity
To those so like us in action and gene?

Are their children any less worthy than our own
To be saved by the sacrifice of Jesus?
Is salvation's cross so churched and narrow,
Redemption so rigidly constructed
That an all loving god of everyone and everything
Cannot extend his mercy over all his sentient creatures?

I would not kneel to any one
Who refuses to save the entire world;
Life is too precious, the universe too vast,
Sentience far too rare to waste my time worshipping
A single species' provincial gods.

She groans and breaks almost free
Before sleep reclaims her and the war continues;
Half-buried in the pillow, the rockets shatter
Her fragile dreams, chasing memory through darkness
As night stumbles towards morning.

The matress flows around her, combusting the years
Into a single bright moment broken only by the pain.
She sleeps, she screams, the windowpane breaks,
Letting time begin again as she stirs, starts to wake
Then falls back into the maelstrom.

Among the ferns and weeds,
I float slowly downstream,
Watching my father age and die,
Giving my children life.

I lie still among a full stable
Of power boats, a leap of fish,
The shadow of a young child
Playing along the banks;
A parent's frantic voice
Hurriedly searching the current.

The waters lap over me,
Daring me to inhale,
As the creek becomes a stream,
The stream, a river,
And the river, a raging torrent
Winding through the tules to the sea.

The trail leads high above the ridge
Where no one ever goes;  as if
The complexities of space and atmosphere
Force us to disown both moon and planets;
As if a solution to the three body problem
Cannot be worked out given time.
The untrampled slope dives seaward,
Unsullied by either star or redwood,
Forcing its way steeply through the shoreline
As it returns everafter to the yawning gape
That waits to shroud us all below.