Ruth L. Rivers Poems

Some People
Some people were cut from binding strings
Those threads which weaved common fabric
Intimately connected through each everything
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There was no kindness in the last kiss
The more common exchange is a hand
A brief comment on the sun or clouds
Our courteous words boring and bland
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You men with your bullets, your bombs and your shells
You men who needlessly turn Earth into some kind of Hell
With your bottomless greed, your power, and your wealth
Please stop, just stop, just wait, just give instead of take
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I know that rock and the gentle rushing
Little brook playing noisily
Caressing these sore and aching feet
Once upon a time it was so close to me
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I wouldn’t do without the sunset,
with all its glorious splendor
nor the shifting light that plays
caressing the sky so tender
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We stand side by side and we are looking and she says to me “Isn’t it pretty? ”, and I nod once or twice but am lost, not on her thoughts, but far away on my own.
With an insistence and plea in her eyes she looks once more, jabbing her finger quite close but not in its range, speaking with little less question “Isn’t it pretty? ”, this time I sigh, knowing not really why, finally looking down at her small hands and face and smile.
Not looking back at me, still transfixed by the beauty, insisting now not to be affirmed but to be really heard, to be listened to in every sense of that word, she cries out with her child’s voice, and unbroken heart and mind, and unsullied child’s life, and everything truly organic in make of chemistry, “Isn’t it pretty? ! ”
I am there then with her, in her mind’s eyes, in her simple complexity, in her fluid uninterrupted breathing, smiling away in her pastel euphoric gaze, and I finally reply,
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We civilly meet those who we greet on sidewalks and streets
With appropriate airs and appropriate hairs we buy our wares
In the days work we’re sure to never shirk our little perks
At the days close we turn on stoves and TV’s in droves
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When one no longer differentiates between what’s called day and others call night
And losing ones self becomes blessed peace at heart along side a little respite
And feelings no longer accord with the rainbow but find them selves shades of gray
And the mind does silly tricks as if refusing to follow rules of today
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Small child who once lay quiet between my bosoms
Silent then, in sleeps calming state
Peaceful lids entwine with stilled feet
You and mine hearts together did beat
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When passion for Passion doth take
its hasty leave
And torid loves find torn their
hearts at end
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