Two Poems:

Plague Light

Where was the light in the Dark Ages?

Did it shine in the huts of the serfs,

Those stinking, dim hovels where birthing entwined dying

And food, piss and shit

Coexisted with pigs and writhing sweating bodies?

Or did it glow in the halls of the lords

Sputtering and hissing in the burning animal fat

That illumed the cold, moist

Steps and walls, always clammy?

Did its rays fall upon the plains of war

Bouncing off bright crushed skulls and glistening viscera

Swiftly covered by the diaphanous wings of flies and vultures?

Or was it in the churches

With their eternal darkness

Reeking with a black bright hell

And promise of fiery damnation.

Or, did it sparkle in the fire of righteousness

That burned under the sizzling bare feet

Of the sinful

As it slowly rose in clouds of smoke

And cooking living flesh?

No.

The light was seen in the gleaming eyes of rats,

As they streamed and stumbled off the Genoan boats

Carrying the shiny shelled fleas

With their innocent deadly bite.

It billowed high on burning pyres

Where bodies stacked like wood

Melted, their bulbous bubous black pustules

Consumed forever.

It broke through the clouds like an angel’s beam

And shone upon a landscape

Forever changed,

Forever changed

Amen

Boulevard l'Hopital: Paris--March 2006

Frozen in time

Fixed in space

A shutter speed

Stopped:

The young mother

Face turning

To face

The viewer

And her ten year old son:

Smiles

Cascading

In waves

As does her

Wild brown hair

Kept demurely tamed

But not conquered

(Never conquered)

We cannot see the boy’s face;

He is turned

To face

His mother

Head tilted

To take in her warmth

(As a dandelion faces the sun and rain)

Dancing on the far side

Of her mother

The eight year old

Daughter/ sister

Braids flying

Leaping

And laughing

At her own dance

And at some joke

That is hers

(Alone)

Frozen in time

Fixed in space

A shutter speed

Stopped.