May 2021
Joe Miano
jmiano@cox.net
jmiano@cox.net
Bio Note: I am a retired physics teacher who has written poems ever since High School.
I have taught in Kenya with the Peace Corps, South Bend, Indiana, and Oklahoma City. Recently I have
published an historical fiction novel, A Thief in the African Night: The Conflict of Change
available on Amazon. It includes a few of my poems.
The Gods Play with Men
March
Twenty Twenty-one
clearing branches
dead ones
hanging branches
brown ones
trimming
live ones
still holding
promise of fruit.
The Gods play with men.
They
like trees
sending
tiny seeds
implanting
them in men
secretly multiplying
spreading
to all
infesting
children
carrying
secret seeds
to old ones
blossoming
into suffering.
The Gods play with men.
In October
early ice
breaking
limbs
bushes
genuflecting
for forgiveness
from Gods
sending
heavy ice
Branches
cracking
strong trees
bearing
fruits and berries
shedding
golden leaves.
The Gods play with men.
Late February
pregnant buds
swelling
arctic cold
aborting
killing
all that was left
like the seed
lurking
in hidden places
transferring
to do its deed.
The Gods play with men.
Only the crafty
the smart
outwitting
the masters
hiding
under a sheep’s
belly
Odysseus
burrowing
in its wool
avoiding
the cyclops
hunger
surviving.
The Gods still play with men.
Modern, crafty men
learning.
Faces into cotton fabric
burrowing
from other humans
distancing
hands
washing
from our cyclops
protecting
the evil seed
stopping
from spreading.
The Gods play with men.
Still pruning
dead branches
removing
destruction
from ice and cold
cutting
branches
once filled
with life
branches
clinging
by threads
to be broken
by whim
the coming
whim
of the Gods.
The Gods play with men.
©2021 Joe Miano
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author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL