In Sanctuary
Between rain & steam is twenty-twenty hindsight
for the time we were young, screwed up, but good of heart still
under some bushel or other for hiding the goldenness
whose light we could not believe came from us ever
when so wild, shy & afraid.
Later, warming hands over a bowl of rice seemed an absolution
& from eyes streamed gratitude amid the lace of blossom shadows
creating fans across each feature.
Camouflage, war paint: what a geisha-watch then
of silence & rare serenity without shame sitting judgment
on embarrassed innocence for what purity made us lame Achilles
in reality’s teeth eating sensitivities alive.
Fix your sandal strap now, veteran gladiator,
easily breathing at last beyond Pele’s ash
& the skin of sheep smoldering boy, girl, boy…
What sacrifices, they, in the daily news reels deadly brutalization
for a glorified nothing. Nothing – you call that,
when it is a weather map for time’s great edifice
fog-carved from the blood of rights abused
amid climbing & descent, those conflicts of flags…
Statues line the cloisters. Pigeons coo in the nave.
Soldier sit a minute with the balm of what mist is lifting.
Is it your spirit after flesh, wondrous with the thought
that reincarnation’s another chance for every life of dashed dreams
& every slave made from hope?
I do not know, dare not claim, here inside what moments are temples
for refugees asylum seeks the way an atheist may pray
because it is just something to do in this thin sphere of light
between darkness & darkness—–
the precipitation, the reports, the steam coming in
over the late breaking rain.
Under the Knife
(Thanks to Kate Braverman)
These are generations: my skin, my skin.
Will the surgeon see, feel that?
Gloves, instruments slip through the years—–
coming to the city, a strange twist, getting off
the wrong bus on the wrong road, & the signs,
another language, though I could read, learned
in a back room on another continent—–
lights of the racks of mounds of clothes
pounded, scrubbed clean.
A million hands were the waves
& we knew of pogroms, of historic territories
tender & rough. Next came – all aboard – factories,
kitchens, an era of plates, of passes to dodge, to give sway
to in the thick of rooms crowding or, with luck, beyond
mobs, in a meadow, by a stream, under stars,
leaves, cicadas…
I’ve tasted sun as a just ripened orange,
tasted the moon as a banana, & rain on flesh
bringing the smells which could stir the trance
of a somnambulist singing don’t forget me, boys.
Is the hymn still the same here beneath these lights
& my eons, tattoos rising through ether?
Back by my bedside in that room floors away,
(surgeon be skillful)
a good small Get Well Philodendron gift waits.
About the Author
Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout his employment still found time for creativity. Occasionally he even got paid of this. Currently he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art (Art Collection from Stephen Mead) . He is also the resident artist/curator for the Chroma Museum.
