Seeker Magazine

Selected Poems

by Ronald L. Haun

POCKET BIBLE

On the flyleaf of a pocket Bible she had given me,
a girl in college I had come to know wished me well.
That's all. Just, "I wish you well."
But she wasn't pretty and she wasn't you.
She was short and stout to be sure, but she had that same joyfulness,
that same playfulness in her eyes as I've seen so often in yours.
Maybe it was only the joy of her youthfulness, maybe more.
Whatever it was, whatever its source or nature, I passed--
as I have so many times since.
I loved you more than was good for me.
And I kept meeting you over the years.
You were everywhere: in novels, movies, and poems,
restaurants, hospitals, trains, planes and bars:
Walking toward me in the late afternoon
on a tree-lined walkway near the library,
or appearing out of nowhere in a boiling hot parking lot;
there at my door collecting for the newspaper,
smiling at me across a dinner table.
You were everywhere except there with me.

I don't take your picture out everyday.
I don't need to.
You didn't write your name in a pocket bible
But your eyes are the same.

TSUNAMI
A cold, brisk wind sweeps the veranda
of the eighth floor clean of all debris.
It's one of those good cold winds
that makes you glad you have skin.
Yet walking there just now
I was thankful for my sweater.
As if on a stroll through the park,
I took in the sights, the east and west.
The west disappears into uninteresting white clouds.
But to the east, rising above the foothills,
shadowed and freckled by thick gray and white clouds,
today's Sierras are indistinct, all but oceanic.
On other days they are giant glistening diamonds.
But today their blue is so deep,
so high it is as if they are not mountains at all
but some kind of enormous Tsunami rushing my way.

A VASTNESS OF BLUE
If I were a sparrow, oh, how light I'd be.
I'd flutter and fly around with no weighty past or with reason to grieve.
When the sun rose each morning, why, up I'd fly.
And when the sun went down so would I.
I'd have sparrow friends, a large sparrow family
To gather into a flock, be there for me and I'd never, ever be lonely.
I'd run up and down an old side fence
Pecking at the feeder set just above for my convenience.
Then I'd sit on that rough old fence, staring with others of my kind
'Til the man inside paid us some mind!
When he finally looked up at my friends and I, why
Maybe he'd remember how easy it is to fly.
But if this day he couldn't or wouldn't, we'd just have to fly away
To go where sparrows go, doing whatever it is sparrows do
When we've left the fence to go flying into a vastness of blue.
In the evening we'd return to hit the feeder he hung there just for us,
Sit in the tree, on the roof and his old side fence with much ado and fuss.
Then each to our neighbor's nest we'd go bickering and twittering,
Tucking our heads beneath our wings, in for the evening.
But each morning thereafter my friends and I, we'd still rendezvous
There on his side fence hoping he would remember how to fly, how to want to.

TURNING
Turning my face to the right in the office this morning
that, should anyone enter, they would not see my tears
I met my soul, crying
It was about this time last year,
April of the New Millennium,
that my soul and I parted company.
It stayed where I was no longer welcome.
All this past year it has hovered
over her home on North Rowel.
I could see it positioned there
in the form of a little boy
legs crossed like an Indian
who, knowing himself unwanted within,
was determined to stay, helpless to leave,
hoping against hope her door would open
and he could breathe again.
But her door, though opening again and again
never again opened for him.
Then this morning as I was reading a prose poem
written by the daughter of a friend I began crying.
And turning away from the tears I met my soul, crying.

Poems Copyright 2001 by Ronald L. Haun

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Letter to the Author:
Ronald L. Haun at Ronalot23@aol.com