THOUGHTS IN THE NEWFIELDS WORD BARN
At Open Mikes
The spoken word
Is often heard, but
What of the unspoken word
The forgotten word
The belated word
The word of advice
The word of wisdom
The word of caution
In the Beginning
Was the Word.
Who will have
The last word?
Who will hear
Our last word?
A PASSING THOUGHT
Flesh of my flesh
(As well as their father’s)
Bone of my bone
(Their father’s too)
How proud they make us
These five fine siblings,
Spouses and offspring.
We are transmuted
Translated to new
And complex persons.
What more do we ask
Than to have a share
In this chain of lifetimes
On our planet Earth.
AT THE ACADEMY CONCERT
Last night we heard Beethoven’s
“War and Peace” sonata
(Or so I choose to call it):
Brief interludes of harmony
Give way to the clash of arms.
And then the “Blitzkrieg Waltz”
(Though he himself denies it):
The dimly heard Valse by Ravel
Drowned out by war’s alarums.
It seems this new generation
Of promising high school students
Does not expect peace in their time.
And those of us in our nineties
Suspect that they are right.