February Blues

Shall I inscribe my eulogy to joy
on this, a lonesome, February day
over a man I'd thought of as a boy
until he sealed my lips. I held no sway,
no current strong enough to draw him out.
My language blurred the lines, then ran astray
into a grayish space that conjures doubt.
My tender words were meant to chase away
the heaviness that lay upon my shoulder.
I poured three cups of flirting with a smile.
And not expecting it – he grew much colder
as if he’d seen some ghost or phantom guile.
Perhaps the coming spring may turn around
that repertoire of joy I thought we’d found.

You Say My Name

You say my name yet I don't know from where
you learned to curl the vowels like whispered twine
on silken breath of gossamer. With care
you say my name.

You speak and all your words become like wine
and California poppies, grapes and air
as thin as in some northern mountain clime.

Your voice of elegance makes my name rare
and takes me to a place outside of time
where I forget my sorrows. Like a prayer
you say my name.

AfterImage

I see your face and hands
through a dim-lit, panoramic view.
My memories of you are like milky glass
wrapped around far-off days,
metaphysical lines funneling through my dreams
tempting me to reach beyond that which I can grasp,
into vagrant fields where children used to play.

In my eyes, you were high upon a ledge
and I, the trailing ivy on your wall,
my curvy tendrils seeking a firm attachment,
my leaves growing outward toward the light.

I recall you seemingly obscured,
packing suitcases,
often traveling – a distant notion.
Yet I can still recall the love from your eyes,
their lovely hue, like the heaven-blue of morning glories.

I heard about you through stories
from lips that fed me ‘who you were’ –
words from mother’s sacred urn of reminiscence
mixed with ashes of her ire
and fragments of your Colorado haze.

I cannot capture the hereafter,
nor touch you as I once could.
Yet sometimes in reverie,
I envision you:
skipping rocks across a river,
sailing a boat across a lake,
laughing heartily for the joy of life,
an ordinary boy who once was
my father's mother's son.

__________________________________________________________

“Remembering my earthly father”
William R. Bryant - (Born - March 26,1932 - Denver Colorado
– Died September 10,1969 - Birmingham, Alabama)

Lonely Girl's Lament

for the innocent children of Gaza and the war-torn world

May I sit in your sandbox?
I'll be very quiet.
I'll bring my own shovel
and leave all the contents.
I'll sweep off the grains -
you may keep all the sand.

I'll stay in a corner;
and you can pretend
you don't know me from Adam
when your friends come around.

Perhaps you'll impress them
with an appearance of charity
along with your rare way
of managing knowledge.

And there's self-satisfaction
in your blithe condescension
as you bend toward a gentile
(read: less than a dog).

I would not have come here
of my own volition;
I was sent by some other,
His reasons unknown.

There's only one Sun
for us here in this garden
to light every playground -
One God for One Earth.
______________________________

Love on the Tip of My Tongue

The words in my mouth have become
Stuck, stuck on - the tip of my tongue.

Where lofty thoughts would skate
They soon encounter hate, hate, hate.

Such violence seems to me pathetic.
The world lies aposiopetic.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

This House

This house is falling down. The roof has seen
its better days, even the trusses sag.
Don't let the moss that's growing in between
the shingles fool you with its charm. The swag
of roses on the door, tied with a bow,
are hung preserved and bundled near the bell.
And when the bell is rung we’ll have to go
to find something to buy – something to sell.

This house is tired of spinning round and round.
The window panes are covered with a haze
of dust and in the garden there's a sound
of tanks and bombs where little Johnny plays.
Through many trying years this house has stood
with hope and fear and nail prints in its wood.

Seed of Doubt

Why should I want to know you if it’s true
that even love is temporary? I
could find no joy if love could only glue
together earthly bodies. Would the sky
exist if there were no one who could see
the glories of the heavens? Science knows
the Sun won’t last forever. Yet 'to be',
it seems requires that there be One 'we'
that permeates through spirit all that glows,
and all things beautiful – each lovely rose
can bloom eternally in the sublime.
Each seed produces after its own kind.
Could love and hope and peace and joy abide
if 'nothingness' composed our formless side?

Last Hour in Gethsemane

“Could you keep watch with me one hour?”,
it’s written that the good Lord said
in that deep garden where the flower
dropped sleepy poppy seeds.. The bread

had made the Lord’s disciples full –
too full to suffer till the last,.
their eyelids heavy, felt the pull,
earth’s gravity was very vast.

Yet Jesus knew that all are weak,
but still, it broke his human heart
to be abandoned – sold for sleep
by those he’d chosen from the start.

The same is so for each of us
down in the valley of the skull
where every thought is ominous,
a cup of trembling – till a lull

shall lift us from the anguished floor
of threshing where the angels swarm
to separate the chaff before
the wheat is garnered from the storm.

Two Trains to the Zoo

- for Andrew David Hamon, my beloved son -


White moths are feeding on chrysanthemums
as squirrels are rolling acorns through the roots
of red oak trees. Gray elephants eat tons
of hay. "Snakeskins Should Never Cover Boots!",
a sign read as we left the reptile home,
(the place where eggs of gilamonsters lay).
Gazelles, so delicate, are free to roam;
orangutans seem happy as they play.
Cream stripes are lovely on brown bongos' backs.
"The Zebras Will Return To Us This Fall",
was posted near a far-out field of yaks.
"Hey, look! Great turtles just beyond that wall!"
"It took two trains to get us to the Zoo!",
exclaimed delighted, three-year-old, Andrew.




Anne Bryant-Hamon-1998
"Summer In Washington"