August 2024
David Oliveira
pobizz@gmail.com
pobizz@gmail.com
Bio Note: I’m retired from programming, editing, publishing and teaching. I have three full length poetry collections, the most recent, Still Life with Coffee (Brandenburg Press); and co-edited How Much Earth: the Fresno Poets (Heyday Books). I live and write on the banks of the Mekong River near Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Looking Through the James Webb Telescope
a festschrift for Glenna Berry Horton on her 90th birthday
To start,
no one actually looks through it—
too far away, doesn’t work the way you think,
revelations too dear for naked eyes.
To see the heavens clearly, as to see life clearly,
one must turn to the conceits of art.
Nothing else even comes close.
It’s all there in the images: the music of spheres
supposed by Pythagoras; Nietzsche in chaos
birthing dancing stars; the mysterious in which
Einstein experienced the most beautiful;
Miro’s startling paints, seen only a second
but thought about a whole lifetime.
Only words make it possible to look that far,
as far as one can see, as far as can be seen.
Originally published in SOLO Voyage, 2024
Resolving the World's Problems
He enters early, ordering a rare glass of afternoon wine
while waiting for his friend in this den of caffeine.
He’s not trying to sharpen theories on life’s inequities,
but drown them in an ocean of unthought and uncare.
After more sips of red elixir, he’s not yet successful, but hopes
by the time his friend arrives, lost Eden will be within sight.
These two have never agreed on many topics, and don’t
meet to settle arguments today. It’s obvious to both
one has the superior intellect, even if they disagree on whom.
Friendship, as mysterious as love, appears manifestly impossible.
Even so, friendships happen, as humans require companions.
The two friends sit in this stylish café to enjoy their drinks
and each other’s company without intrusions that large issues
present into these pleasant cultures of wine and coffee.
Earth doesn’t change much day to day, millennium to millennium.
Not much happens which hasn’t occurred many times already
and that isn’t on schedule to recur many times more.
It seems highly unlikely discussions between these friends
can come to any long wished-for and elusive resolutions—
though they have agreed to a date and time next week to talk again.
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