Day: April 11, 2023

T oday I didn’t feel less
didn’t feel more
just clear and comfortable
and reasonably level

pale golden yellow

no small victory

*
rob kistner © 2023

Poetry at: Poets & Storytellers

Poetry at: dVerse

 
T onight
careful hands
peel back cracked
and yellowed protectant
from dark and aging pages
of long-ignored
dusty albums

compelled in the moment
my wife is liberating memories
of other life moments

immortalized

faces and places
call from another time

a beautiful young bride
a proud new husband

our sweet children
living
and not

family and friends
here and gone

other visuals
strangely vague
yet hauntingly familiar
draw us in
spark warm recall

remembered laughter
and tears
gratefully of joy

captured images
unfold on our coffee table
like a cornucopia of time

insistent emotions
cascading one by one
and all together

time
the grand thief
thwarted by lens and film

time
who would steal
the treasures of our heart

time
who would conceal
cruely holding hostage
the moments of our journey

that unrelenting thief
is now at our door
once more
threatening to steal
what precious time
we have left

deeply moved
by our situation
we embrace
silently
deeply

tears well and glisten
stirred by heartfelt gratitude
for this proof of life before us
this proof of love

tears also of hope
for more

*
rob kistner © 2023

Poetry at: dVerse

We exist
in a fragile sphere
of suppressed possibility
gripped in the freeze
of a dark time

this slag-shattered
glass of the future
moves frail and slowly
through the arc of the ages

midst those who’ve waited
and watched
at the waning of truth
‘neath the uncertain moon
of deliberated ancients

this fractured orb
revolves in the void
of lightless null

not hearing
what we knew to be
the plaintive cries
of the lost

our echoed cries

blind to the light
of the dawning
that heralds a new word
for a possible world

a new word
for this time that’s upon us

this brittle critical time

I am the bud and the blossom
I am the late-falling leaf
I am the arc fulfilled
I am the time come

come to the here
and the now

where we’re held
firm in the fire
of visions and longing
for what we were

and for all
that we are to be
here in our heart
at this moment eternal

even as
we gaze forlornly
across pooled hatred
through a divided curtain’s fall
at a fractured mirror’s reflection
a reflection of a waking nightmare

a glaring hallucination
of a polarized reality

dual worlds
close enough to touch
but too far apart to engage

dual worlds
through which truth
stumbles blind

beyond reach
or reason

no connection ’tween either

we walk as wraiths
through fevered empty streets
moving in these dual worlds

captive
to the bone-white lies
of both

mumbled
in the low voice
of dark deceit
implied in their toxic grins
of inflexible conformity

lethal tradition
revered in mindless trance

change
shackled to the instrument of fear
with grip rough as rope

change
bound at the shadowed edge
of dark and light
of plague and cure
of repression and justice

the edge of lethal ignorance
and profound knowledge

change

bruised
disillusioned
yet possible

but still seeking to flee
like a squandered teardrop
forever away from
our failing grasp

but hold fast

beckon the unfolding dawn
summon the emerging morn
herald the yellow-gold sunrise

there is far to go
and much to learn
rising from this dark night

but someone needs first
release the light

hold fast
perhaps torchbearers emerge

*
original publication: rob kistner © 02/18/21
revised publication © 04/07/23

Poetry at: dVerse