Daedalus

For centuries we could but dream of flying

With waxen wings that melted in the sun;

A hopeful youth, enraptured and then dying:

Pursuing freedom, and by it undone.

Then through hard work we made our wings of steel

And strapped them to huge motors to ascend;

No more a myth: a fantasy made real,

The full achievement of the longed-for end.

Then, being human, we could never rest

On the achievement of a miracle:

We took the triumph of this ancient quest

That turned what was fantastic to empirical 

And made it awful (as we use the word):

Uncomfortable, unpleasant, and absurd.

Classroom Experiment

The sky is screaming over each sunset,

Complaining that the purple is too much;

Sinking into the sea, the sun is wet,

Contaminated by its liquid touch.

The empty stars illuminate the scene

As night descends and darkens as it does;

The orange has faded out of Halloween

And all is watered-down from what it was.

Tomorrow, not today, the sun will fill

And burn again into its watery grave;

The orange and purple of its pained plunge will

Once more wash over every winking wave.

For now, the night commands the silent sea

But we remember how the day will be.

Ekphrasis in a Nursery

The Jesus on the wall can read a book

(A tech but little known when he was living);

I doubt that most would give a second look

To see the lesson that this Christ is giving,

But I am cursed to wonder if he reads

More slowly from a codex than a scroll

And if, when his stigmata slowly bleeds,

It stains the pages. This then takes a toll

On my imagination of the scene:

The children being read to would then see

The spreading red, and ask what it could mean

And contemplate his remortality

And Jesus, seemingly returned and preaching 

Would wonder if they'd heard what he was teaching.

Song of Myself

I contradict, but not like Whitman did.

I am not large, except in belly size.

Within my soul no multitudes are hid.

I contradict myself--am sometimes wise,

Sometimes a fool, always a human being--

Because I cannot keep my own thoughts straight.

If God exists, all knowing and all seeing,

Immense and awesome, immeasurably great,

To them my thoughts would be no awful tangle:

In their dimension all would be quite clear.

But I, mere mortal, have no holy angle

To disambiguate my hope and fear.

I contradict myself, and therefore suffer

Like any other simple, honest duffer.