Whisper Your Area 51

                  “Russian Aircraft Flies Over Area 51…”

                        -U.K. Daily Mail, 31 March 2019

Each of us is an Area 51
In hiding from a psychic bombing run
Behind the barbed-wire fences of our senses
Beneath the radar of our consequences

Our secrets are so secret that even we
Don’t know what they might be, could be, will be
Because the slide-rule calculating hearts
Can only slip between odd-numbered parts

Each of us is an Area 51
Playing hide-and-go-seek
                                                   but not for fun

The humming of a forest glade
The bumbling of bees,
The place you stop
To take your shade
Beneath the ancient trees

In the vapors of the seas
As they caress your face
In monkeys on a vine trapeze
In a gazelle's grace

There, then gone
Without a trace
God's in flakes of snow
Glistening like tiny lace
They collect in floes

God's in the meercat's
Funny show
In otters having fun
In their holes the
Snowhares go!
Lizards seek the sun

God is in...

The wildflowers won
By maidens in the field
He's in the soldiers
With their guns
Who make the foe to yield...

But God is NOT
The cause of war
As many claim to say.
He is NOT religious "score"
He wants us to PRAY.

That our leaders
THINK and STAY
Their armory to CEASE
He HATES those
Who in their way
Destroy our Planet's PEACE.

So let's give God
A break at least!
He loves us!
Have you heard?
He wishes LOVE
To flow... INCREASE!
Our ***** we must gird

God's in ALL CREATION.
Sublime to the absurd
He wants PEACE for Nations

IT SAYS SO IN HIS WORD.


Catherine Jarvis
(C) 3/30/2019

55--is it the limit?
I’ve been slowing down, for sure.
Trying to economize, but my size
is growing.
No longer a tease; I’ve got bad knees.
I seize the day,
but please,
ask me if I prefer the elevator.
I might see you later--or not.
We can't count on tomorrow,
but I don't dwell in sorrow.
Now I hear more, see more,
even when I've lost my reading glasses. I know what life is for.
I grow things. I sing. Gladly
I do the dishes.
I have no birthday wishes. Wishes are for a future.  
I’ve removed things, and sewn a suture.
The way I was is history. That girl, with pretty shoes,
didn’t play the blues.
Now I listen, and I play those tunes.  
I’ve got no use for pretty, ‘cept for being pretty sure.
Sure, I've been wrong—wrong to wear those shoes, for one thing,
cuz my toes hurt.
Now, I know all the dirt. I’ve got things buried so deep
no one knows. But from the dirt, stuff grows.
I’m watering those plants, and wait til you see what springs up. Time ain’t up yet,
and there’s a green hill, and tall trees, and a sunset.

We have no fine old paneling of oak
No ancient silver on a sideboard new
When Charles the First still wore his handsome head
We have no Latin, we may not smoke, but still -

Between the cinder blocks and coffee urn
Dining upon the finest plastic foam
We laugh at yarns that Saint Augustine thought
Well out of date when Africa lost Rome

We have no fine old paneling of oak
But every day we share a fine old joke

S/he who is coerced
To move with
A straitjacket
Above the dead
And below the living
Is whose fate.

A horse dragging
A cart
Unable
A genuine message
To impart
In fact
No better than
A doormat
Unloading words
With a servile pen
On a bread-winner journalist
Inflicts a harrowing pain.

Poor sailors and poor students parse the past
Between the paper covers of poor Penguins
Poor crumbling pages and crumbling civilizations
Held together with rubber bands and Scotch tape

And when in middle age The City of God
At last succumbs to the barbarians of time
A fresh one is built up in Oxford blue
By Vivian Ridler, who saved for us the words

And yet - the arguments of several Romes
Were somehow fresher at $3.75

“Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness…Only the solitary seek  
       the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it
       sufficiently.”

                          ― Boris Pasternak,  Doctor Zhivago


You cannot write with your fist clenched in hate
You cannot sing with a conscripted voice
You cannot dance if you are made to march
You cannot love if your heart is not free

You cannot think if they slogan your mind
You cannot play if they deny your joy
You cannot dream if they program your spirit
You cannot pray if they poison your soul

You are an artist, a seeker of truth:
And no one should finish this line for you