Shifting Sands

Book Dedication:

To my two daughters, Nancy and Sharon,

whose inspiration is all I have needed.

"A retentive memory may be a good thing,

but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.  

In memory's garden keep all the nice things,

forget the bad, my dears!"

Shifting Sands

                               Oh shifting sands, for time a counterpart,

                               The sages made you representative;

                               You mark the hour for man but from the start

                               His hands reach out for more than you can give.

                               He clutches every moment, borrowed grain,

                               To probe the secret that might hold you fast,

                               But fateful winds will snatch them up again

                               And scatter them throughout a dismal past.

                               Not on the lax, unstable sand alone,

                               That shifts, one moment there another here,

                               But molded well in firm abiding stone,

                               The poet left his footprint, deep and clear.

                               With solid rock in reach of grasping hands,

                               How strange that some will build on shifting sands.

 The Tangle

                                       Our lives, like balls of yarn, were wound

                                       As neat as springtime weather;

                                       When cupid played the cat, we found

                                       Them tangled up together.

                                       And now I trace a thread each day

                                       But find a knot in that,

                                       And often you can hear me say

                                       With Grandma, "Darn the cat!"

Sorehead

I sweep my hair atop my head

For one express occasion,

And each indignant root becomes

A torturing abrasion.

East of Eden

                                       How long, how darkly long before the light

                                       Can salve one throbbing of this stubborn pain?

                                       Yet morning mocks me and I beg for night,

                                       But dark on inner dark wants day again,

                                       And I am shackled to infernal blight,

                                       With hour on dragging hour an endless chain.

                                       My brother is my keeper, for his chain

                                       Of darkness binds me in a glaring light;

                                       I hear the voice of blood cry out again,

                                       Crying from the earth-embowled night,

                                       And all around about that cry of pain

                                       Will surely wither, stricken with the blight.

                                       That Wicked One used cunning ways to blight

                                       My heritage and forge an ugly chain

                                       Of sin to lock my door against the light.

                                       What gain have I from first-fruits, when again

                                       I am engulfed by this malignant night

                                       Beyond the East of Eden, where the pain

                                       Of anonymity is more than pain

                                       Inflicted from perpetual curse of blight?

                                       What profit lies in issuing a chain

                                       Of generations from my loins? no light

                                       Illumes them for posterity; again

                                       They will become the vagabonds of night.

                                       We are the wandering stars of outer night,

                                       The unwatched, wolf-torn flock, twice killed by pain;

                                       We are the withered fruit, cut off from light,

                                       The tossing waterless clouds, the raging chain

                                       Of billows, foaming out our shameful blight

                                       Upon the sands, again and yet again.

                                       Our cities fall; they rise and fall again;

                                       We till the ground, but in the stealth of night

                                       Our meager yield is trampled, and the pain

                                       Of hunger is the offspring of the blight

                                       Stalking East of Eden, with a chain

                                       Of storehouses and baskets over-light.

                                       Dim Westward light, when will you burn again,

                                       Assuage the pain and melt the murk of night?

                                       O must the blight link more sons in its chain?