"THE SOUL OF MAN" AND OTHER LATE-LIFE OFFERINGS

    LIFE CYCLE

    I value my life,
    but don't remember my birth,
    and won't remember my death,
    yet both are crucial,
    extant and extinct.

    Life filled with days
    each a lasting effect,
    some good, some bad,
    I own them all,
    see my calendar as proof.
    Most I remember, some I choose to forget
    --others will remember them for me.

    None can compare with my birthday,
    a special day, indeed!
    From not being to living,
    a first breath, bath, and name,
    the genesis of my belly button,
    seeing, crying, eating for the first time.
    What an important day
    not to remember.

    I won't remember dying either
    however it may come,
    my life erased in a micro-second,
    no time to change or take another chance.
    I won't remember becoming extinct.

    Who cares?


    UNSEEN MIRACLES

    Miracles span generations;
    my mother performed miracles after she died,
    some were scholarly, a few pedantic,
    others general but in a particular way,
    all defied laws of physics.

    They pierced stone, steel, and glass
    from a world without light or darkness.
    They see through my eyes, hear with my ears,
    touch everything with love.

    No hi-tech, psycho software,
    no middlemen
    except Bach and Mozart to cohere.
    Only God is condemned to work alone,
    for us there is the omniscience
    of things unseen, otherwise
    there is no point to make.

    Miracles are not monolithic
    anchors of our minds, or home grown.
    Nothing is as hair raising as an unexpected miracle
    That freezes all thoughts into ice like organ pipes,
    until the vision materializes.
    People don't make people better,
    mother's miracles do!


    ANATOMY OF A POEM

    Inner sounds culled from life's silent essence
    awake non-obvious events,
    mimic art's imagination,
    faux prompts, biases, laments.

    Explore vagary, reality,
    aware of metaphors
    that solve nothing, cure less,
    cast a net trapping insightful ethos.

    Music needs sound, paintings color,
    ideas crave reality,
    language follows deafening silence,
    all avoid calamity.

    Words provoke inspiration,
    the human condition of
    unconscious composition,
    proof of creation.

    Privileges of our world
    without which we are not home.
    Silence the sounds yet unheard,
    when ready they are a poem.


    LOST HEROES

    As trains leave stations,
    ships sail, planes fly,
    they pass a stationary motion
    of transient sensations.

    Today's idols putch past heroes,
    soon supplanted by successors.
    It's hard for heroes to survive aging dialects
    of thesis. antithesis, and synthesis.
    Wide gulfs separate yesterday's heroes from today,
    As seen through makeshift glasses not scientific lens.
    Once ravishing now ravished, captivating now captive,
    they can't understand decay.

    To bring them back dispels clarity between sleep and
    waking,
    they never said goodbyes,
    how many memories can air hold
    beyond a trace of wet eyes?

    "Come back, you are here and now," I said,
    Spartans unburdened by old bones,
    not knowing they are dead,
    but for this poem's metaphoric zones,

    TO WIT:

    Hello, Gen. Washington, you won a war
    against the only army you ever saw.
    Today you'd face terrorists galore,
    religious fanatics who thrive on gore.
    Goodbye General, your horse, sword,
    and 18th century corps.

    Strut your stuff on the runway of time, Cleopatra,
    a Greek, who came to Egypt's reign,
    married her brothers, Caesar, and Antony in line,
    the goddess Isis her claim to fame.

    Lost the battle to Octavia's hasp,
    was killed bitten by her own Asp.
    The feminist of her day,
    occupying Wall St. is not her forte'
    So long Cleo, return to your crypt,
    no place for you here or Egypt.

    A supreme commander Ike was,
    fought and won battles better than anybody does.
    Brought back to point the way,
    bewildered by wars of today,
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