A Poem A Day 10.

Afternoon Catechism

Despondent, in the afternoon

heat, this dull interlude a siesta

in an already stalled existence;

painless and pointless, drifting,

waiting for a reason to achieve

something, anything significant,

though what that means, I hardly

know.  So few of us make waves

that anyone notices, and those

who do are rarely satisfied. So

little of my one, small essence

will ever be known, and I wonder

at the thorny gift of conscious

life and how in my own meagre

self I hold the wonder of a thousand

night skies, and the thunder of the

sea in full fury when king tides are

running and the moon is full at

year’s end and how in me there is

the miracle of birth and the layered

patina of uncounted griefs, lived

in raw reality and in the resonant

suffering of others and how I hold

stories of hope for a future long

beyond my span of days, and

memories, mine and collected, of

times in and beyond the hard limit

of my own mortalilty, which I

cannot make longer but perhaps

will make larger, since it does

not take a giant to encompass

eternity and even gods are human

just as even humans are gods.

Kerry Miller

A Poem A Day 2.

Moment

Outside this house,

the leafy village echoes

with birdsong.  There are dogs

barking, and a lawnmower

in the distance.

Outside this day,

there is the push and pressure

of a thousand demands. 

and a hundred “What if’s”

that clench and twist with

perverse possibilities.

Inside this moment

all is still.

I am a synapse within consciousness,

a flash of awareness, fleeting.

This whole idea is too big for me

and this life, too complicated,

but if I am still,

the synapse opens

and eternity courses.

Kerry Miller