Poem of the Day – March 26

The eucalyptus leaves twitter against

The dull, flat sky. Is the sun’s absence

Punishable? The brain awakens more slowly

Than the muscles, the bones, the tissues

All twitching with energy pent up

In the inert but harrowing night, while the brain

Lumpen and inactive in the skull,

Sends rote signals here and there,

Without reflection. Random movements

Like the cat’s prowling through the labyrinths

Of back yards. Memory, knowledge, beauty,

Truth trapped on neural roads closed for repair.

It’s like the gray nest of wasps secluded in the eaves,

Light, sound, color, movement pokes it, keeps

Poking it until tractable thought comes pouring forth,

Buzzing, swarming, an angry chaos that erupts

Into the murmur of imagination, into speech, into

The reckoning that carries the bones and tissues

And organs into the tunnels and passages

Of another gray and bewildering day.

 

 © Dennis Hathaway

 

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