National Poetry Month

Someone told me that April is National Poetry Month, so I thought I would post a trio by my younger brother, Robert. Only last year did I discover that he had been writing poetry. For years and years I have known him as a master science teacher and naturalist but recently he showed me a little collection of poems he has written, most based on his great love of nature. He claims that he wrote these poems to pass the time while proctoring classroom exams but it seems to me that they reflect a lifetime of experiencing nature at close hand. 

                                                      DREAMS

 

So

 sad it seems

so many

 have better thoughts

In dreams

I

 wish to be truly awake

for

 in reality

all dreams are

fantasy

I

 wish to flood 

my brain

with

 scintillating stimuli

to overload

 my senses

where

 sight becomes sound

odors taste

taste by touch

and

in this burst 

of

 sensory confusion

no fear

of 

delusion

 

Somewhere in Belgium 1971 upon seeing so many of my army friends getting high on drugs.  Empty lives as Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” ###

 

SLEEPING IN A CEMETERY

Slept

Out of doors in a 

cemetery

last night

no animals came by to

eat me

no aliens dropped down to 

abduct me

no corpses arose to

haunt me

but

the full moon

startled me

thought it was the

sunrise

bright enough

to read

the sadness on the

tombstones

a newborn baby died

mother died a year later

husband remarried

second wife died

during childbirth

returned to sleep

only to be wakened

by the birds

who had anticipated the

dawn

###

EXTINCTION

Thinking

of extinction

can be quite depressing

all the genomes forever lost

all the life no one will ever see

what happens a billion years from now

when all earthly creatures

are cooked by our bloated red giant of a sun

the genomes of every living thing should be saved

a DNA flash drive locked in a box

for some future space traveler to find

I would put a warning on this

genomic Pandora’s box

revive, reanimate all

except for  Homo sapiens

for this species was too wise

too clever, too devious

too loving, too good

too bad, too selfish

too generous

but

much too 

dangerous

###