Poetry Friday016

The Complexity of being Human

Good mousers can smell a trail
long gone cold, and will
Persist with haunches quivering
Tail erect and short inhalations
More like snorts, noses
Pressed down into wet, mouldy tunnels
With enough memory of mouse to illicit
Pavlovian response and anticipation of
Warm bodies, scratching, scrambling chase, blood letting.

On the other hand, desire leads down rabbit trails of
Mysterious occurrences, confusion and disappointment
Forks of indecision where one trail leads to ecstasy
The other, a cold grave.
Blood-warmed bodies become comfortable in their skin
Numb. Complacency is a dead end trail.

Yet, sometimes, on a sleepy Sunday morning
With the house shifting and creaking and ticking a lullaby
Stirring possibility presses its’ timid nose to the ground
In search of the scent that remains.

Lesley-Anne Evans

February 14, 2010

‘Sol Deo Gloria’

Poetry Friday015

Garage sale Harry

What’s the measure of a life anyway? Can you find proof in
Stuffed bags of mason jars, or the patina of well used garden tools at $2 a piece?
I don’t know what to say to you
as we stand on the driveway of the house where you
plowed furrows into the garden with the rototiller, sowed and tended and helped her
Preserve abundance in matching canning jars and fruit
pies set on the counter to cool. The ‘Sold’ sign’s up, resulting in
This Saturday morning bargain basement sale of your life stuff… is this the end… really?

Leaves me filled with sympathy like spoon fed mush, unappetizing to the likes of you.

I make small talk. You look slightly pained, as if longing for closure.

As for her, death might be more humane, as they say, “A Blessing.”
Her children, mere acquaintances.
Grandchildren are strangers, and it’s like a coma,
A lingering death… mind going going gone. For now
At least she knows you sometimes when you visit the sterile room where they keep her tucked in safe.

The worst part for you aren’t her blank stares or angry questions, but
The dirt under her fingers nails that will soon be scrubbed clean by competent staff, washing away more evidence of the farmer’s wife you’ve loved since Kamloops.

Lesley-Anne Evans
July 2010

American Gothic, by Grant Wood 1930