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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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37.
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Less Than Infinity (October 12,1999)
Six billion.
Doubled in less than forty years.
Can you count a billion?
Nine zeros times 6
Means what?
Hands, fingers, stomachs, mouths
Six (6,000,000,000) billion
Elbows
Bracing one against the other
For whatever reasons
The Earth becomes cement
The sky ripped apart
The tiger, the hawk, the elephant
Die
Bones in a graveyard
Overgrown with weeds
Distended open-mouthed babies cry
Needlessly
Choking on air
Too thick to breathe.
(Previously published in The Hinterland, Spring 2000, Issue 1. Note: On Oct.12,1999, the world's population reached 6 billion.)
Laurence Overmire
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38.
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Ode To An Endangered Species
Will you not leave us here too long
We have not paid attention
To squander the best of the world
A pity we do not understand
Ourselves
No more you fly in the wind
No more the buoyant ripples on a pristine pool
The splash of color in a worn-tore land
No more
The survivors sad lament
Yet no weeping will there be when
Your perfect, singular form
Vanishes
The muted salting of a wounded Earth
And all that is and all that ever was will
In some way be
Diminished
For the loss, though unnoticed
Will be recognized
In the stillness of eternal night.
Laurence Overmire
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39.
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Rumpelstiltskin
I weave the gold with clandestine fingers
In silken thread of head and heart
A skein of treasure lying on the floor
In a humble cottage of a far beyond wood
No passer by would think to look
Or care to consider the fortunes lost
When wayward men refuse the hearing
The spinning wheel behind the door.
(Previously published in Miller's Pond Poetry Magazine, January 2001, vol.3)
Laurence Overmire
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40.
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Self-Portrait
The essence of a life is in the face
Each wrinkle etched with a memory
What was once young and beautiful becomes
Old and haggard with time
A life hard-lived, hard-won
Battles waged in vain
Losses by the score
Imbedded now in the sadness of the eyes
A dollop of paint, a muted color
The artist captures the decades
With the flick of a brush.
(Previously published in ArtsFusion, Dec 99-Jan 00, Issue 17)
Laurence Overmire
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