Deciduous

Deciduous

               And he shall be like a tree

                       planted by rivers of water.

                                    Psalms 1:3

                      

I am a tree planted halfway down

the river which already starts to slow up

and spread out before it embraces the sea.

If not an oak, pine, or maple, at least

an alder with new leaves each spring.

If they don’t come, I’ll know I’m in trouble.

The root of the problem began when

I turned one limb away from the sun. 

My own chlorophyll should be enough,

I thought, to last through the day and all

night long.  I was wrong.

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                         2 March 2012              

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

In our class picture I’m

the boy with unruly hair.

I sit by my best friend Dwain.

The other Dwaine sits behind.

By high school I tamed my hair

and cut it short.  I also cut my name

so it wouldn’t be misspelled

or mispronounced.  I’m the last

of our three D’s to go.  The other

two died young.  Even the high

school was torn down, and two

more built to take its place. 

Brick yards to grave yards—

that’s what I remember most.

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                          1 March 2012 

Quick Tour

Quick Tour

In each backyard outside

Tokyo rice paddies say,

“Make do with less.”

On the way to Fuji

the bus says, “It’s a long

climb, but worth it.”

Too soon we board

the jet to China.

Too late to ask

the crow who woke

us in the hotel,

“Have we met before?”

                    —Donnell Hunter

                            29 February 2012

Off Line

Off Line

What happens when the postman

and inspiration go on holiday?

For one thing you save a stamp.

Your philatelistic self

tries to help, but you gave up 

collecting some years past.  

If there were rain, you could count

the drops, transliterate their rhythms

into beats, into iambs or dithyrambs

no one else understands.

That’s what makes a good poem,

someone says.  I know what Hugo

would say, but I’m too much

a gentleman to say it here.

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                       28 February 2012

On This Day

On This Day

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

            —Abraham Lincoln, 27 February 1860

On this day in an election year

ungainly Abe stood up, ill-dressed,

and addressed the burning issue

of the day.  He told us what we knew

was right but feared those who crowed

louder and cowed the cowardly shadows

of our selves to silence rather than rock

someone else’s boat lest waves

make our own lives tippy.

At the end of his speech the crowd rose

to its feet.  Three months later he won

the nomination that made him president,

perhaps our greatest, and the first of four

brought down by assassins too cowardly

to let a good man live.

Have we learned what he taught?

Do we believe that “right makes might”

that an honest man is greater than a strong?

Or do we cower underneath the politically correct,

even when our own souls shout

that we are wrong?

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                          27 February 2012

The Naming

The Naming

I think of Adam when beasts

and fowls were brought to him

for names.  How did he keep

them straight?  Carolus Linnaeus

not yet born, the language of phyla,

genera, species unavailable until

after Babel.  Especially the fowls

where male and female differ so

much they could come from

separate planets for all he knew.

And he did this all alone, we read,

without a help meet for himself. 

After it was finished, he slept

a well deserved rest and woke up

with a scar on his side. 

He opened his eyes and before

him saw the help he hadn’t known

he yearned for—the mother

of all living—as different from

himself as birds of Paradise.

One last name to come up with. 

He thought hard for us all,

with no swerving, and called her Eve.

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                       25 February 2012

Soliloquy

        Soliloquy

Once you finish your coffin

you knock on wood and wait

for a knock at the door.

Or for the dog to come back

from his amorous night abroad. 

Twice a day the tide comes in. 

Its rip beats a swift retreat

at the close of the third act

you watch all your life after

the curtain is drawn.  The lines

you thought you knew by heart,

you forget and have to ad lib. 

Maybe your lines will be better. 

Maybe no one will notice

your exit left, the heroine still

on stage for her soliloquy.

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                           24 February 2012