May 2008 – EARTHSHADOWS

I cannot stop the wind from blowing

Nor still the ocean tides;

A rose will bloom without my knowing

To adorn an Autumn bride;

Yet I can stretch a loving hand

To embrace a frightened child

By greed its rights denied.

I cannot halt empires from growing

Nor make the rich provide;

A war will rage without fore-knowing

To scourge fair countryside;

Yet I can join the crescent throng

Refusing to abide

While innocents have died.

Let this be writ upon my tomb:

That I did not my eyes blindfold

Nor close my heart to doom,

But rather with a poet’s voice

All shameful deeds retold.

Copyright: Sylvia Evelyn, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013.

Cati & Carlos

‘CERTIFIED’

Bewildered
you drifted into a Nomen nescio
sphere of the mind.
Undefined space packed
with psychedelic images,
inventive speech
or tragicomic contradictions.

Regression to an earlier time
of diapers, bibs, drool,
goodies and night terrors.
Doctors say you’re chancy,
might set the house afire,
slash me with the kitchen knife.
Me? You?
Not so.

When I whispered ‘Till tomorrow, honey’,
tears welled in my eyes:
your mortifying ‘G’night, Mother’
stabbed at my heart.
Wayward, outsize babe,
snatched from my arms…

There’s a void in our home,
a ‘What now’?
Twenty married years,
so ephemeral,
a fleeting presence by my side.
Must I reinvent myself?

Our cat dusts
book-lined corridors
with her Siamese fur,
ponders ‘Don Quixote’ yearningly,
then whiskers your pillows,
sleeps under them.

She and I need our zany,
quixotic cavalier,
even if you’ve been…
‘Certified’.