Because of personal stresses and time constraints, I'm choosing to share another Lee McCormack poem this time around. I also want to acknowledge the passing of the poet Galway Kinnell. http://www.nytimes.com/...
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Kalliope
Means "beautiful voice" from Greek ÎºÎ±Î»Î»Î¿Ï (kallos) "beauty" and Î¿Ï (ops) "voice". In Greek mythology she was a goddess of epic poetry and eloquence, one of the nine Muses.
Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
Another Country
Beyond this island a country exists
at war with itself, where some insist
they know just how and why suns rise
from the sea, even as their own days slip
back into the dark of ocean's twilight fist.
But we who watch, who wait gods to arrive --
any who survived to relieve the ache
that keeps us suffering and alive
as blood light breaks through cracks
in morning's crimson sky --
learn to believe others travel there
while we remain locked inside
weather, wind and sea,
rising from silence to growl
and roar the constant, changing mystery
of earth and body moving steadily towards
a country whose language we can't speak
until we journey, disembark, arrive.
So in storm's breath wild lightning flowers
bloom in tattered fields of wind, wild bees
of rain dive, sting, and bring us to these honeyed
pain-reviving scenes we lose in hours of deep sleep.
For, though I did not know until I broke,
we are not strangers as we creep towards
love from one dimension to an Other.
And it is no joke all crossings are perilous
and tenebrous to us while we wear
this animal body so thoughtlessly,
until form giving energy dissipates and leaves
us wanting more, as we wait to slip
over and across gravity's borders
to that other country which,
except in us, has never been at war.
LHM © 2014
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