Tag: Secular Poetry

Two swimmers met in a pool one day,
And one of them was drowning.
The other was afraid.
The drowning swimmer was the better of the two,
And the lesser wished to swim away.
“If his strength has been made weak,” he said,
“What can my weakness do?”

He began to drift away.
The drowning swimmer never looked.
No one ever new.

Two swimmers met in a pool one day,
And one of them was drowning.
The other was afraid.
The drowning swimmer was the better of the two,
And the lesser wished to swim away.
“If his strength has been made weak,” he said,
“What can my weakness do?”

But he screwed up all his courage,
Dove him down and swam;
So the stronger swimmer lived
By pushing down his friend.
And as he climbed to shore and looked
He saw his brother, caught
In the pull that held him too.

He looked away.
He told his friends,
“My brother died today.
I was at the shore and could not save.”

Two swimmers met in a pool one day,
And one of them was drowning.
The other was afraid.
The drowning swimmer was the better of the two,
And the lesser wished to swim away.
“If his strength has been made weak,” he said,
“What can my weakness do?”

But he threw aside all thought of courage
And held fast to love;
He called himself already dead,
And down he dove.

The stronger swimmer lived that day,
Saved not by strength, but by a friend,
And moved by grace he looked at him,
Breathed deep his breath, and dove again.

Then on shore they lay,
Each grasping for his breath,
And when he’d caught it, first the one
And then the other left

Neither spoke a word.
No one ever knew.

Sunlight streams down empty faces
Crying in the dirt
“I’ve been hurt”

Daylight shines in silent mockery of tears
“Who told you to shine today?
I wanted rain”

No one notices the rain is gone
The blood is dried
Pain has faded, yet we cry

The evening is longer than the morning
Yet it seems so short
Because we compare it to the rest of day.
At dawn we forget the darkness
Until the grass is dry,
When the waxing turns to wane,
We see it, and remember,
And curse the dying day
Not because we hate twilight
But, “Too soon! Too soon!” we say.
Whether it be summer or midwinter
“Too soon! Too soon!” we always say.

Here lie some broken lines of poetry
Some seem to rhyme
Some do not
Gathered here they were
by a careless hand
Who threw them out
as fast as seed on the wind

Hush! who knows?
Perhaps they shall take root
and grow into something useful
beet back the maize
of labyrinthine wordplays
And come at last to an open place
of quiet meaning

Or they may be eaten
by some mindless creatures
cracked upon the rocks
But I will not be someone
who cares about the consequence of words
Let them fly free and who knows
One word may yet change a Nation

for outward things
we all need cages
for we are half-defined
by what confines us

but inward things
cannot be defined
because the cage
is what destroys them

Even as the face
needs ears and eyes
and nose to hold it in
and so define it

so then the soul
claims the face as anchor
a launching point—foundation
and not an outward line