July 22, 2010

MANY WAYS TO DROWN

America gives many ways to drown:
Unsupervised motel pools trap stray tots
Who can’t reverse their tiptoe down the slope;
Kids who can swim explore the same pool’s drain,
Get suctioned to it, have their guts ripped out;
Teens play in creeks in flood, or riptide beach;
A flooding river sweeps cars off the road;
New Orleans’ levees break and thousands die.
For all of these, poor government shares blame –
Loose laws, weak education, lack of funds,
All driven by those tax breaks for the rich.
(Oh - add rendition’s waterboarding deaths.)
But I drown in girls’ large-eyed innocence,
Pools of enchantment and primordial depth.

Published, Ambit No. 200, UK, April 2010

1 comment:

  1. "But I drown in girls’ large-eyed innocence,
    Pools of enchantment and primordial depth."

    Or so one might think. Have you noticed, however, that girl eyes and cow eyes are a great deal alike? What this could mean is that what we see in the former comes more from our imagination than from the source. Then too, the eye magic works a great deal better when many other attributes are present.

    I have to remind myself of these things a lot, but, at 61, not so much as I once did.

    ReplyDelete

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