June 2017
Lee Evans
alebap@outlook.com
alebap@outlook.com
I live in Bath, Maine with my wife and one cat. Of the three of us, the cat is the most articulate in expressing himself. I am employed by the local YMCA, and otherwise spend my time doing things that are too non-verbal to mention. You just have to be there.
Paper Work
I looked at a tree.
It looked back at me!
I turned away,
Red-faced with shame:
For the woods looked
More real to me
On paper, and in memory,
Than in their green
Reality.
But wouldn’t I rather
Have joined in the laughter
The humorous breeze
Tickled out of a myriad
Fanciful leaves?
Alas! I would rather
Be back in my study,
Typing away—
The simulated
Wood-grain panels
Reflecting the myriad pages
Of my treatise
On Ecology!
My Words to His Music
Hardly able to speak or walk,
He sits on a bench near the river’s rim;
Or in a chair by the town clock,
Sheet music spread in front of him—
Strumming on the guitar he played
Before the crash that wrecked his life
Left him strumming night and day
The weary chord of his own strife.
But the melody never gets in tune,
And the words never materialize;
And he strums away the afternoon,
Ignored by the frantic passers-by.
I’ve scrawled for years on many a page
Aborted rhymes and sentences,
Doggedly strumming my own serenade—
Except that somehow, now and then,
Miraculously, poems take form;
Words sprout wings and soar in flight:
And this is why I strike one chord
Monotonously, day and night.
One day we both will find our voice,
His music and my words entwined—
Arrest rush hour with joyful noise,
As the world with us is harmonized.
I looked at a tree.
It looked back at me!
I turned away,
Red-faced with shame:
For the woods looked
More real to me
On paper, and in memory,
Than in their green
Reality.
But wouldn’t I rather
Have joined in the laughter
The humorous breeze
Tickled out of a myriad
Fanciful leaves?
Alas! I would rather
Be back in my study,
Typing away—
The simulated
Wood-grain panels
Reflecting the myriad pages
Of my treatise
On Ecology!
My Words to His Music
Hardly able to speak or walk,
He sits on a bench near the river’s rim;
Or in a chair by the town clock,
Sheet music spread in front of him—
Strumming on the guitar he played
Before the crash that wrecked his life
Left him strumming night and day
The weary chord of his own strife.
But the melody never gets in tune,
And the words never materialize;
And he strums away the afternoon,
Ignored by the frantic passers-by.
I’ve scrawled for years on many a page
Aborted rhymes and sentences,
Doggedly strumming my own serenade—
Except that somehow, now and then,
Miraculously, poems take form;
Words sprout wings and soar in flight:
And this is why I strike one chord
Monotonously, day and night.
One day we both will find our voice,
His music and my words entwined—
Arrest rush hour with joyful noise,
As the world with us is harmonized.
© 2017 Lee Evans
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