Courage

The water is calm, almost too calm
Echoes of laughter from dripping oars
Wander out across the dawn
Painted here by the heavens
In that endless wonder of the ages
That leaves me feeling so small.
And still I try to fill the pages
Of my life, or better yet my day
With some sort of grandeur
Rising up from depths that are not mine
Until there is nothing quite so pure
As the silence it leaves me with.
What courage will it take to love?
I have learned from the silences
And am left with a wanting of words
Or simple actions that don’t betray my fear
That love scars long and deep and wide.
In the end it is me fishing the sky
With oars dripping laughter.

That Boy Standing There

Standing there he gets covered in dust.
Snotty nosed and skeletal, he doesn’t care,
His little arms wear themselves out with joy;
It is just a car.

The sun sets blood-red through the dust
Silhouetting talonned thorn trees;
He walks barefoot but doesn’t notice
I am falling in love with Africa again.
He smiles.

A bowl of rice and prayer for beans,
The pathetic dogs linger just out of reach
Hoping some child is sloppy, unfortunate
But here, they never are, never have been,
The bowl is empty.

His mat is made of grass, the floor mud;
Somehow he sleeps, soundly, soundlessly
Through the memories and chaos of dieing.
Somehow the dead don’t speak from this ground
It just swallows everything and anything forever.
I can’t sleep.