"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." ~ Lao Tzu
Poetry’s Palace
By Connie Kerbs
Poetry preserves the silent sounds
Of a billion basking creatures
On a puzzled globe, outlined with
Sanded, rocky, living beaches.
Layers of life teem anonymous in tide pools,
Aching, thirsty, impatient for faithful return
Of the tide’s quenching, caressing, salty foam,
Ever ebbing and flowing mysterious reaches.
Poetry pauses time imperceptible
Between flutters of hummingbird wings
Flitting lively, vivid, pointy passengers
Ever piercing for succulent nectar.
Poetry’s heart throbs warm and deep
With fierce and ferocious motherly love
For tender offspring needing
A determined, devoted protector.
Poetry is the cascading fountain
Of outpouring, choking emotions
Overflowing at a field of flowers
Poppies blooming in bright blood-red
An endless, waving sea; nature’s monument
Of breathtaking beauty beyond belief
Grown from the bones of fathers, brothers, friends, and foes
Sown from the fallen, the heroic, the dear, decaying dead. *
Poetry eases anxious love with epic distraction
Poetry refines the graffiti engraved on the lonely alone
Poetry soothes those obsessed, separated lovers
Languishing under the same moon, a mile or oceans apart
Poetry declares ravenous passions in shameless proclaim!
It celebrates seasoned love’s inextinguishable flame.
Poetry consoles the private, grievous weeping of love lost, and
Poetry massages and thaws the hardened, frozen heart.
Some think poetry is a haunted, poorly lit mansion
A pile of rambling iambs in a dusty, cob-webbed bastion
Composed of elusive, cryptic, baroque reflections
Echoing tired and tedious, rhetorical, inherent questions.
But, poetry includes the shunned, and rejects accepted objections;
While it loves to tolerate subtly obvious, agreed contradictions
Poetry reveals hidden deceitful truths in coerced freedom
It, indeed, masterfully marinates the melancholy to perfection.
Poetry is a heavy moon hovering on the horizon, jaw-dropping low
Boasting the sunset trapped inside as an encore to the show.
Poetry is a nation’s pride, bubbling generations deep.
Poetry is that place in between awake and asleep.
Poetry is a thicket of invisible crickets chirping their charming song,
proud, and loud all the twilight night long.
Poetry is a grandma’s lilac hedge scenting the air with a sweet trace.
All from starts started long ago, taken from her grandmother’s place.
Poetry is a world class orchestra with dozens of musicians in balance
Who've collectively practiced a million hours
shaping and honing their musical talents.
Poetry resides where justified pride no longer divides
And protective, selfish, seething, gritty grudges
Relax into resolutions and supple solutions, and
Anger, despair and grief are exchanged for a washing of feet.**
Poetry is an elegant, eloquent, spacious place of escape.
Where Descarte’ and Darwin take cookies and high tea together
Where Freud and Marx discuss on the couch, in hushed voices
About Galileo and Olga Bergholz, and Keats.***
Poetry is Shakespeare's midnight dream in the summer
At the divine, sublime, Poetry Palace Suites.
*Referencing famous WWII Poem In Flanders Fields by John McCrae.
**A Christian symbol for humility, as Christ demonstrated with his Disciples.
***Descarte: The Father of Modern Philosophy/Formally Reasoned for Diety
Darwin: Father of Evolution whose work has been used to argue against the case for Diety/Creation
Freud: Father of Modern psychology
Marx: Father of Sociology
Galileo: Pioneering Inventor/Father of Scientific Method & Modern Astronomy
Olga Bergholz: A poet whose work in Leningrad was a beacon of light for the survivors of the worst siege in human history.