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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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121.
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The Word
There is a word
Somewhere
Hidden
In the dark, back wayward recesses of my brain
The perfect word
That fits the cadence and the rhyme
The word
That makes sense of all
The confusion
The word
That wonderful word
Is waiting
And all that remains
Is for me
To find it.
(Previously published in The Aurorean, Vol.5, Issue 1, Dec.1999; Poetry Soul to Soul, Apr 2002; The World's Strand Anthology,2007)
Laurence Overmire
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122.
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To Face (senryu)
Looked straight at the son
blinded by the seeing
truth shining in the eyes
Laurence Overmire
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123.
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To Gov. William Bradford (of Plymouth Plantation)
I think of you now
My 10th great grandfather
I think of you now when
I should have thought of you
Many times before.
The debt of gratitude I owe
Too great to ever be repaid
If not for you, I would not
Be here.
And yet, how many others can say
The same
This entire nation perhaps was
Held together by the seed of your
Committed strength and character.
Across the great ocean you came
And left all but a dream behind
Your wife, lost overboard
Before she ever set foot to shore.
Yet you endured, you and only a
Handful of those who started the
Long and perilous Mayflowers journey
Survived that first
Decimating winter.
How did you keep their spirits up?
How did you buoy your own?
We do not think of the price you paid
Not now, in our comfortable beds
What is it to us, who never look back and
Blindly stumble forward
Tripping over our own ghosts?
We might do well to seek your wisdom.
How did you do it?
The truth is in the soil
The land claimed and made
Holy by your unwavering faith
A promise clasped in your
Firm hands: of justice, with honor.
You saw the opportunity, didnt you?
You refused to let us down.
The chance was there
Perhaps the last chance for all
Mankind
To create something different, something new
Something far better than the weary
Unyielding world
Had ever seen before.
(Previously published in Honor and Remembrance, Indelible Mark Publishing,2007)
Laurence Overmire
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124.
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Tower Window
The Prince was a stuffed-olive of a man
Beautifully proper and horribly dull
Little did she know that damn glass slipper
Would be her undoing
Marrying a fantasy, a childish thumb-sucking waste
Of wishful thinking
O that wicked godmother
To fill her head full of lies!
Sure, she had the palace, the servants
The golden carriage and a
Poodle named Poof
But that Happily Ever After line was just
A ruse, a convenient cover
For all the despair, a brave smile
To hide a secret longing for something real
Something tangible, to hold in her arms
Forever
To feel the Earth, solid beneath her feet
On hands and knees scrubbing, bleeding
Rags to work new miracles
A wild, impetuous roll in the cinders
With a brash, uncultured stable boy
Who takes her face between his laboring hands
And kisses her, gently
With a promise that cant be broken.
(Previously published in Kookamonga Square, Feb.2003)
Laurence Overmire
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