9-11
New York harbor
Twin Titanics sinking
Too few lifeboats
Tag Archives: Death
THE SHEEP OF HOLLAND
THE SHEEP OF HOLLAND
Sheep soft on the soft wet grass
between our house and the old windmill
Sheep running in the distance
a long row of cotton candy
pulled by invisible string
March lambs gambolling
on the sides and tops of dikes
The black cloud of hoof and mouth
gathering over England
strikes as we leave
Watching the news in Atlanta
my farmer fear pulls me back
Memory revises
I stand in the bare fields
look at the bare dikes
Taste the burning wool
WIDOWS
WIDOWS
Greece is a land of widows
black dresses with brooms on empty stairs
This comes from ten thousand years of wars
Greece is a land of proud and arrogant men
This comes from lives of great danger
And the supply and demands of
ten thousand years of widows
HANGING TEN WITH DEBBIE
HANGING TEN WITH DEBBIE
When she was alive
she was just so damn alive
It makes her being dead
just so damn much more dead
We were together
the day the Challenger exploded
and the day the Gulf War started
Violence all around but we never fought
We just laughed and played
and howled at the moon
And surfed ten years
on that sweet sexual edge of almost
then she died
If either of us
had leaned ten degrees closer
we might have caught the perfect curl
and saved the world
Three degrees and we might have been
two reef torn bodies on the sand
but I block out scenes like that
I just see her innocent wave goodbye
I just watch the uncaught waves roll by
REMEMBERING SOCRATES
REMEMBERING SOCRATES
Last walk on the Acropolis
Last look at the Parthenon
Last time through the door
of low roofed home
Last glass of wine at kitchen table
the tightness in the chest
Last talk with pupils and friends
comforting around the couch
Bitter taste of hemlock
Dead cold creeping from feet
up through legs, torso, chest
Spots of light leaps upward from brow
Where is Socrates asks the guide
did he die
Socrates is the light I reply
ANNA
ANNA
Could a drop of blood
from the pen of Anna Akhmatova
enter my blood
that I might write with a deeper red
A husband falls to the firing squad
a son in prison for no greater crime
than carrying his father’s name
Seventeen months at Leningrad prison
she waits in line each day for word of life
mid screams of those who learn of death
She has been a poet for thirty years and more
woman in line asks, “can you describe this”
she becomes a poet now
LOUIS AND SUZANNE
LOUIS AND SUZANNE
Suzanne gets cancer
she gets cancer real bad
The doctors get out their big guns
They wage war with everything they’ve got
The cancer laughs at the doctors
It breaks out on many new fronts
The doctors, defeated, suggest surrender
Louis and Suzanne go to Mexico instead
Suzanne drinks fresh juices and does cleanses
Louis quits his job and takes care of Suzanne
Suzanne gets well
Louis takes care of many people
He took care of people in asbestos mines
For years he has not slept well
and he does not breathe well in the mornings
The doctors are treating him for sleep apnoea
Early this year he has a bad cough
The doctors do X-rays, Louis has cancer
Too much asbestos, ten years growing
It is too late for the doctors, or Mexico
Louis dies, life is funny
FOR DEBBIE AND DAD
FOR DEBBIE AND DAD
– by Carolyn Meili
As America reeled
in its new found vulnerability
Its myths exploding over and over
on wide-screen TV
You found a friend
perhaps the only one I have ever seen
who demanded your best
but not your sympathy
Now, in her absence
we discover our own vulnerability
and the strength in it
I watched the moon tonight
and she is full
Beaming among us
(written by my daughter Carolyn Meili, who met Debbie a week before Debbie’s death. Said she had never made and lost a friend so fast)
DEBBIE OH DEBBIE
DEBBIE OH DEBBIE
Debbie oh Debbie
are you thinking of going away
because no one ever asked you
hard enough to stay
Debbie oh Debbie
were you always so beautiful strong
that no one ever thought to carry you along
Debbie oh Debbie
the brave wolf that still shows its throat
and bleeds inside of its coat
Debbie oh Debbie had we but loved
less wisely, but more well
who can tell who can tell
Debbie oh Debbie
are you thinking of going away
because I never asked you hard enough to stay
HILLMAN
HILLMAN
A shadow on the wall in Hiroshima
ashes on a lake in Austin
Donna looks over the side of the boat
and cries as they drift
because she cannot see his face in the ashes
She might also have looked
for 81 years from China Sea to here
for the feet of the best dancer she ever knew
the graceful movements of Tai Chi
the hands of massage
and the mind and heart of a poet
The ashes drift to the banks and bottom of Lake
Austin
All that remains are the shadows on our minds and
hearts
And the walls of Hiroshima