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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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29.
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Anachronism
He should have been born in another age
In another place, another time
The lord of some castle, or a wayfaring knight
A man of honor and distinction
With a lovers weeping heart
Intent to set some maiden free
For he cared too much, you see
He believed in truth
In justice, and in life
But he heard the children cry
When others told him not to listen
And when he tried to speak himself
They slapped a dollar on his wrist
Only the knife they found beside him
Could stab that dollar from his mind.
Laurence Overmire
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30.
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Ancestor
I touch this stone
Barely legible
My great great great great grandmother
The face Ive never seen
Not even a picture, no photograph remains
But here you lie
Your bones beneath the ground
So close, my journey so long
To find you here
This quiet field
Hot summers day
We spend a moment
Not as brief as it would seem
Enough perhaps to know
Youve been here all the while
And I, in the return to this
Sacred place
Regain some lost part of myself
The future a little less forbidding
The same sky, the same sun, the same story
Related
All over again.
(Previously published in Red Coral, Spring 2001)
Laurence Overmire
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31.
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Arrowhead
Those who have not heard the
Songs of the Fathers
Have not heeded the cries of
Mother Earth
She whose heart bleeds when
Brothers hand and Sisters tongue
Shoot indifference
Through the Sacred Circle of the Sky
Rivers red with blood
Rush to stanch the wounds
The mighty forests weep
The buzzard rules the fallen tiger
And little men, with poison dart
Sit in little metal boxes and
Cackle.
(Previously published in Autumn Leaves, May 2003)
Laurence Overmire
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32.
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Corporal Punishment
Swimming through the treacherous office shallows
Limbs kicking, eyes wide with fear
The tantalizing morsel passes temporarily unscathed
Through the maze of hulking predators hiding behind desks
Viper sharks looming in the shadows of the tinted glass
Peering behind water coolers
Waiting for the opportune moment
When conscience sinks below the surface of integrity
And dollars fall like seashells to the floor
Then smell the blood
Fins slapping fins
Deals struck through the bowels of the victim
The voracious tearing of insignificant flesh
Schools of barrister fish homing in with parasitic glee
The mad impassioned frenzy round the entrails of the kill
Until at last
No trace remains
Desire is spent
And the stillness of the deep settles
Once more
Over the cubicles
The minnowed minions take their respite in the dark
The precious fleeting moments
Before the next days feeding begins.
(Previously published in The Hold, May 2003)
Laurence Overmire
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