ВОЗВРАТ


                                                          
   December 2005, #12                                         
 
Poetry__________________________________________                                                        
 Al Zolynas                                                                                       
                                                                      
           
Things & Creatures                                                                                     
 

FLOOR

I support your walls
with their stained,
translucent windows,
your filigreed ceilings
with their busy chandeliers.
I'm the bottom of the box
you built
for yourself to live in.

BED

It all happens on me--
birth, love, death,
sleeping and waking.

Your passionate dreams,
full of violence and hope,
are nothing to me.
Through all the changes
I remain the same.

TABLE

I'm made to be put upon,
to be sat at.
Round or square,
my numbers are millions.
I stand solidly
on my many legs.
Where you find me,
you find the ungainly two-leggeds,
moving, always on the verge
of losing their balance,
of falling down

PLATE

I receive only to give away.
My life is simple
and full of surrender:
I'm picked up, put down.
In the end, I'm always made clean
or broken.

FORK

I mock the hand
that feeds with me,
that made me in its own image.
Handle and tines,
wrist and fingers.
I'm metal and will live
almost forever.

KNIFE

What, after all, is cutting?
One thing moving through another.
What about pain, you say?
What's pain?

HAMMOCK

I'm a bed of wind,
a pendulum of quiet ecstasy,
an ocean wave of bliss.

Lie in me,
forget your troubles,
remember who you are. 

UP                                                         

BELL

You use me to call
and warn each other,
to remind yourselves
of beginnings and endings.
But it's just another
of your wonderful games
wrought out of metal.
If you ever heard me once--
truly heard me--
the universe would be yours again.

CANDLE

I live in two realms:
by daylight, the catatonia of stiff wax.
Under the sun
I can only sleep.
At night, in dark emergencies,
I go into an ecstasy
of broadcasting my small light,
everywhere blessing the shoulders
of furniture.
I burn! I melt!
The more I'm awake,
the more I disappear.

SHADOW

Clearly, I'm what's real.
Don't be fooled
by those twin ephemera,
substance and light.

CATERPILLAR

What hope do I have
with so many hands
to hold on with?
At night, when the leaves blow,
I feel a fluttering inside.
I want to let go into the wind.

FROG

You could learn much
from how I sit
motionless
on my lily pad,
awake,
and ready for everything.

WORM

eating the earth
passing it through
passing through

ECHO

I'm what happens
after what happens.
And what's that, you say?
What's that you say?       

       

                                    ©A.Zolynas   

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