Ten years of sunshine, fantasies, and song.
Nothing was right; nothing was wrong.
Suddenly you’re up against a wall.
It seems like everything or nothing at all.

When you were younger, things were what they seemed;
Bedtime stories and parent’s esteem.
Everyone said you were funny and enchanting.
You didn’t despair, were never wanting.

What happened to that perfect world?
Why are you now so scared?
Did it vanish in the morning?
Like a wistful vision, without warning…
Or was it taken from you by
A cold and pitiless world?
Did it make you shun the things that you once dared?

At sixteen, you’re just a little bit older;
The world seems much  harsher and it feels much colder.
But it’s still the same place,
Then why the sorrow in your face?
Do you think you should have been told?
Think anyone told him or her?
But it’s the same place it’s always been.
Ask your mother and father how they fit in!

It’s not easy on the outside, looking in,
You seek it for comfort, but that’s hollow and thin.
You’re a loner, despite all your friends,
And your pain doesn’t stop where the loneliness ends.
You can try all you want, to be one of them,
Yet you’re still just yourself in the end.

Night so often brings a lack of force,
But in this other world
That hums alongside ours,
There is a golden line riding in the sky,
A horizontal meridian
That runs like a road,
Across the plains
Where invaders roam
And you should not travel
On your own.
So hang onto the line and fly
Above despair or fear,
Until you reach a darker cliff
And enter the realm
Of Pythagoras.
Along with his elfin helper,
Who spun the golden line
Steered by Pegasus.
And slung below the stars,
Thin as a spider’s web
And strong as steel,
He gives frail dreamers
Safe passage from world to world.
Above the winding roads
And forests of dark mist,
Those of Eriador, Earthsea and Hyrule
Sail like Odysseus past rock-bound isles
And Sirens’ songs and Loki’s smiles.
But what lies beyond those hills,
The dubious mortal asks.
To which the winged horse replies,
“Only those who dare
And trust me safely to consign
Will ever know where leads
The Meridian of Pythagoras,
The endless, golden line.”

We were born in the jungle,
Living in the shadows,
Clinging to our families
In the dark, under the trees.
Life was good then,
We had picked fruit from branches
And swung on them for joy.
And there was no greed
Or jealousy.
Over millions of years,
We lived in harmony,
Until the forest changed;
The garden shriveled and
Faded away as we watched.

Our lives were rearranged.
Some among us ventured out.
Giving to our sin: curiosity.
Down in the street
Canyons of concrete and steel
The powerful gather
Hors d’oeuvres are served,
Placating the hunger of the powerful,
This is never stated;
They will keep taking
As long as we allow it.
One day, some loner, a rebel
May emerge from the shadows,
Dark-clad, filled with inchoate rage*.
He will find like-minded souls
Who use the new inventions
To topple the oligarchs,
Empty their accounts
And give them to the world.
Chaos may follow,
But out of it a new humanity
Might arise.

I wake up from a drugged sleep just at sunset.
It allowed me the luxury not to suppose
That I felt our love dying in the bright sun,
Your need fading with the oncoming dusk,
But could see myself resurrected in the rose:

That transient swath beneath the glow,
Just above the horizon.
It reminds me of times that were,
When I was myself and didn’t know you.
It is harder to remember than you know.

What a blessing to imagine I don’t care at all.
I’d forgotten how warming.
To breeze through the day in a comfortable way;
No more skating on glass, but letting them pass,
All the things that once were alarming.

Perhaps I’ll awake on some fresh morning,
Done now skirting the old and new
And you’ll come striding through the rising sun.
I’ll be myself again and you will be you
And we’ll go strolling as we once did, into the blue.

August 9, 2016

At fourteen I learned to sail—
The difference between true wind and gale.
I learned that babies do not come from prayer
And wondered if we were all wanted,
As my mother often said.
At fourteen, I stopped myself from caring
What kids on the bus thought of me,
Or whether I ate school lunch alone.
How unnecessary had been all that fear,
When I learned that I liked myself
Without their praise.
At fourteen, I learned that other girls
Cared only about pimply boys
And the dates, rings and ownership each claimed.
What a small, unexceptional life, I thought!
But at fourteen, I was too selfish
To pity them, much less humor their desires.
At fourteen, I realized that my dad was imperfect,
When he dodged the excise tax on his car.
Did he commit this tiny sin to rebel
Against an unappreciative wife,
Or did he feel the vicissitudes of life
As I had just begun to do?
At fourteen, the world was opening
Like a lotus flower in a teacup,
Soon to spill over and fill my soul
With longing for passion and logic,
But for something else ineffable.
I would find in later years
That the wanting itself could be enough
To stir those depths into song or quiet joy.
Of all the things in my soul and mind
And in the world beyond, I would learn,
That the only absolute is inexplicable—
The only perfect, human thing is love.

If the food of love be poetry or not,
I only judge half our love
Yet, lest the happiness be forgot.

For every time you made me cry,
It was cancelled out by joy.
And after all, love continues to try.

To resurrect what we had before,
In a gilded autumn ignored; seeming lost
Yet love keeps tapping at the door.

If we could have one glimpse of the past,
Or wander in that magic wood again,
Would the memories let us pass

Into a locked garden and through the door
To open a trunk filled with gold,
And fill our hearts once more?

December 4, 2018

Knock on any door
And you may hear the cries
Of children, deep within a house,
Whose parents smile at you
With that eroded grin we all know
Like the stony leer of a gargoyle.
And yet you can do nothing.
Not yet…

Visit any friend at their house
And hear the silent pleas
Of a wife and mother
Who endures the fear and pain
For reasons the mystify us.
At least now.

Walk the floor of any factory or boardroom
And you will see the man who bows to his master
While, at home, he treats his family as slaves.

Visit the mansion of any president,
Minister or king
And you may see the ragged masses
Of those who built the walls yet have no home,
Who work the farms and have no food,
Who tend a country and are refugees.

Thus, in the cry of any child,
The fear in a mother’s face or
Silent rage in a worker-slave
Or immigrant dispossessed
And you will see the tyrants who rule,
The fathers who strike and bosses who fire,

Yet all of these serve one master
With many names:
Property,
Greed,
Violence,
Primeval rank and…
Power.

To this power,
There is only one answer
And to alleviate the suffering,
of those oppressed,
Only one thing.

Glance out a northern window
and Winter suddenly beckons,
just five days after Solstice,
begging me to think again
on my habitual dislike.
The marble-white stratus above
looks as soft as a woolen blanket
covering all the strange things
outside this world's sky.
A vacant calm descends.
And I am content to be quiet
as the scene outside,
Bucolic and static as
A winter scene by Brueghel.
I trace the bare branches that weave
all around, seeming to huddle
near closed and shuttered houses.
They emit a silent desire to be known,
uncovered, naked models to the season
and sharp as a line drawing.
All the stillness leads to reflection
on the world we forget in summer,
the hidden moles and groundhogs,
insects that no longer irritate,
allowing us to cease effort
and sit at the table in the sun,
eating stew and drinking mulled wine.
But those of us who are curious
walk in the snow, hearing sounds
we never noticed: the crush of crystals,
the crack of frozen branches.
Or when the snow falls,
there is a softening quiet,
a restful pause in the air
and we are entranced, standing to listen
without effort, to the soundless sound
of mind without thought,
of Winter.

What is our maker, why does it put us here to die
What is Life if it must end,
What of our sense of beauty,
Of mesmeric minster air?
Or the way light bends on a summer afternoon,
The way the mourning dove croons,
If it must be taken all away,
When some of us must go and some of us to stay?

What is the love we feel,
For one another—deep, fearsome and real?
Why put it there for us to overcome,
Since the tension of love is not for some.
Or why take it into our hearts,
Only to wrench and stab us as we part?

Especially those who love only a few?
They open themselves to one or two—
Pour every part of their being into one soul,
Ignoring those who can't make us whole,
If only to watch it drain, or disappear as they depart?
Taking with them all our mind and heart?

Why do we expect an explanation
Of this cruel phenomenon,
The findings, trials and accommodation
That we build our lives upon?

And yet, with hope, however weak,
Stanching up our wavering hearts,
We tell ourselves we’ve found what we seek,
Something deeper than knowledge or art,
Until we are torn apart.

No religion can explain it.
Psychology tries and fails to name it.
We are creatures of mist and desire,
Of logic and deliberation,
Whose desperate brains whisper “Find a cure!”
And we wait only to have experts demur.

But deep within our harrowed souls,
We know that, for only a few,
Does this equation work,
And for the rest of us, it pales.
We plummet toward the hangman’s ****
And yet thank him for his gruesome work.

For our few bittersweet tales of life,
And that relief we feel comes at last,
Though we’ve no reason to believe it so.
We merely seek an end to the heartrending past,
Even if it just marks us as life slows.
And watches us as we go.

Does anyone care what happens to the lonely,
Or especially the aggrieved?
I doubt they do; they care about only
Themselves, their desires and taking leave.
Then they swiftly exit, and discard us—the bereaved.

Sharon Talbot
August 11, 2015

His plane sailed into a milk-white sky,
white mare's tails spiraling in pale water.
Mind and time became elastic as he
vanished away and then returned.
I look for days like this in winter,
with hints of soft sunshine
and opalescent clouds.
Sometimes the harshest season
is the kindest, and paints a scene
that soothes artist and lover,
when wishing hands part the cloth
of reality with dream.
Or when the earth itself
Seems to remember soft interglacials
And seasons seemingly spun
Like cotton candy to soothe
The wounds inflicted by us.
Earth is like the mother spider,
eaten by its young.