Steve Bloom
USA

Prophesies

The medicine men
of the sun dance
foretold a day
when the buffalo would return
and the white man
would be gone.

Now the buffalo multiply
on the plains again,
and so there is but one
item left on our agenda.

Distant Shore

I.
Every time I start a new one—
blank page,
beginning keystrokes—
I feel a bit like the castaway:
writing his message,
setting it afloat in a bottle, dreaming
of the distant shore where
another human being might care
about my plight
(or not).

II.
Most bottles swamp and sink—to rest
among the dead.
Consider all the poems conceived,
but never read.

More than we can count have tried,
and simply disappeared for every hero
history will come to know.
How many theories stir how many minds
before the simplest truth might
find someplace to grow?
Thousands sprout in order to achieve
one tree-top, worthy of its spread.
And countless leaves must fall to make
a single imprint in the stone.

III.
Each new beginning represents
a dream—a chance, perhaps, to leave
our frail imprint
upon somebody’s stone or shore.
And so another leaf departs its tree today,
to join the ranks of history’s fallen
and unknown,
while theory undergoes a test as I,
crouching on my stretch of beach,
release this bottle—transferring custody
to whatever waves pass close enough
for me to reach.

The Missing Pen

I stand in the kitchen, conducting an octet
for chicken, onions, mushrooms, carrots,
tomatoes, wine, garlic, and herbs. There is
a recipe somewhere, but like any musician
who has played the same piece often enough
I have no need to look at written notes.
And as I wave my baton I find myself
imagining this same time spent
on a different composition—one
more like the octet by Mendellsohn
presently competing for my attention.
I have studied enough music, after all,
recall aspiring to such a life not long ago.

I force myself to push the pangs aside, return
to the world in which I actually reside where
consolation is available in the form of a truth,
threadbare from repeating: Our musical octets
most often end up, like just some random poem—
imagined, perhaps even written down, but
never heard by another’s ears. (What right
have we to dream of practiced, or learned
by heart?) I can, on the other hand, know
with some reasonable certainty
who is likely to consume this pot of stew.



The Disobedient Child

The mischievous 10-year-old slipped
the washer on, threaded the nut, and
tightened it—first with fingers
and then with her wrench—until
the plate of stew was well
secured to the dinner table.

“How many times have I told you
not to bolt down your food?”
scolded her mother.

Half a Dozen Candles

On the day
when one day more
means one year more

in a year
when one year more
means one decade more

I extinguish them
with a single breath,
revel in the applause
earned with so little effort,
decide: From this moment
if anyone asks "How old?"
my answer should be "six,"
because like the child who
is offered a cake
graced by that number
of flames, I sit here today
looking forward to all
the world has yet to reveal.


 

Copyright, Steve Bloom.
All rights reserved by author.