we can just travel
from country to country and
we can disappear

9:40 PM
10/9/19

What Can We Do...?

                         They may break our bodies…
                   but they need not dominate our minds.

                                          -C. S. Lewis

Every book we read to a little child
Every kindness we work for another soul
Every bowl we fill while serving the poor
Every prayer whispered, spoken, or dreamed

Every cup of coffee shared with a pal
Every wheezy old joke about Pat and Mike
(Or, to be fair, about Trevor and Neville)
Every small joy sung to the universe

Is a beginning

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
A five-cent-piece Scotch-taped onto the arm
A plastic K-Mart special from long ago
A groovy thing for a junior high kid

But he was a thirty-something day-laborer
And in the silent cell of his solitude
Wanted to spin some tunes in the darkness
Just like he did when he was a junior high kid

A five-dollar garage-sale record player
Wagner, Sinatra, McKuen - and hope

For us there is no Stray Dog Cabaret -
Our art burns at the end of a welding rod
And in the muscled turning of a wrench
In heat and sweat against a frozen bolt

Old work trucks parked in an oyster shell lot
Eaten with rust from the chemical air
And past the gates, cracking units, and tanks
A plywood paradise with ice-cold beer

Some of us work the night shift to pay our way
Through college, where we learn that we are

                                                             privileged

There’s a symphony
in her voice and it's playing
on all my heartstrings

10:19 PM
10/9/19