Eyes open
Close your eyes when dawn is falling
Listen to truths you prefer not to know
Open eyes wide when the dark is rising
Discover truths when dawn is low
Listen to feelings for those loved deeply
Warming with light when cold winds blow.
Foreign Words
A rich word in a foreign tongue
May not connote but denotate
Because it never leapt with fire
Like Hamlet from the page or stage
But being foreign it may seem
Stranger to the foreign ear
Than to the mind benumbed by custom
Which listens hard but does not hear.
As It Was
for Helen Thomas
They echo when the day breaks,
distant voices, distant voices,
a child laughing, a dog barking
a rumble of thunder yonder
behind the hill's shoulder,
the far co-ee diminishing
after the last farewell.
In spring again we rise
echoes fall away,
the common day calls.
Did you catch the moment,
did you? You were there,
remember? Do you?
Finland in Spring
In the Gulf of Finland
you splashed through a foot
of spring meltwater,
walking on thick winter ice.
Fishermen left warning branches
over the holes they fished through.
Remember?
For R.W
Accident deletes a life,
eliminates a speaking voice.
Heard by some as a threat
but the roots of his faith
exact our recall. His words,
abstract, subtle, learned, warm,
talk on through his pages
claim attention still,
a flow we may oppose
but will not kill.
Shadows
Shadows creep fast across the lawn
Watch them move towards you.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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