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I wrote the fourth iteration at the very edge of my sanity, where sense looks beyond its fortress wall into terra non sense. I had a textbook in high school called, “Sense and Sound.” This poem is evidence, perhaps, that I err in being more in love with sound than with sense. However, poets like Robert Frost not withstanding, essentially, poetry is the language of insanity.
I cannot decide if this poem is worthless or a masterpiece. Of course, likely, it is neither. Still, I sat with it for several days, asking the question. In the end, I realized it isn’t my question to answer.
Think of the second stanza as 911 call taking. “Ever in our ear we hear a keening voice so clear and near.” The “runes of resurrection” are the words we salve for people’s hurt, and the life saving actions we occasionally take on their behalf.
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February 17th, 2023
In Memory of My Beloved Husband, Floyd Russell Taylor.
Also Dedicated “In Pectore”
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As dawn clarified itself into morning light,
Then, as afternoon yawned within evening’s sight,
With finality, my husband closed his eyes
On the oblivious and chaotic earth of the ruined,
Wailing under the runes of misfortune.
It was the ides of his death, when the poorer poets sing the cliche
Of being borne to an everlasting shore to dance among the immortals.
Orotund Oratory aside, in truth, Heaven was mere justice
For his having kept the faith with me, his very own harebrained poet.
I’ve gone mute beneath the ticking seconds of the clock,
Growing ever so slowly old and diminished.
Speechless, thus, utterly humbled, at last I can listen
With the antennae of a hare’s most sensitive ear.
Through a static of the other side’s dimension, I still could clearly hear
The grace notes of my husband’s soul,
Now, a song that was suddenly embellished by the inspired notes of a Genius.
Who was the Genius singing his music?
I remembered,
Once, I too could sing.
*
All who are born on this day of the 17th, in the month of February,
Let us not cross paths just to suffer the very sight of each other
From some slight or another, ad nauseam.
Instead, as if it were the honor of a mission
Bestowed by the constellation ruling our birth,
Let us rise to each occasion of another’s pain, not ours,
Whenever in our ear we hear a keening voice so clear and near.
So human, that meld of all such voices, if faceless, though faithless.
May the synthesis that is its pitch become the prelude
To songs from all of you to me, from me to you, ad infinitum.
Our hopes for humanity could be the very grace notes of our souls.
Some Genius will divine these, intertwine them
With an overarching melody of love, a dance for fanciful footwork,
That inexplicably draws us together for a mysterious and godlike end.
Until She, He raises their mask and we salute, the die be cast. Acknowledge, Bow.
Clasp and shake hands on this, all of you and me: May we die as one of them,
So plebeian, so emblematically all too human.
Worthy, we will be blessed, a star in the constellation decreeing our death.
Once, we forged the runes of resurrection and gave them away with extravagance.
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Men and women should not bolt for cover with the alacrity of hares,
But breathe the air of their tomorrows, dare to smile, then Dare.
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Steven Golden
Written in Green Valley, AZ,
Completed on February 5th, 2024, 9 AM
stevengoldenpoetry 