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Best Poems From
YEN CRESS
(3/9/43)
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25.
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One December Night
Far brighter than the suns's sharp rays,
Far larger than immense,
A pinpoint perforates the haze
A thousand light years hence.
We gaze above, my friend and I,
And shiver in the cold,
While megafires burst in the sky,
Exploding molten gold.
A score of bright stars draw our gaze;
We recognize a few.
Four thousand lesser lights appear
As black replaces blue.
We shiver in the growing chill
And still we stand, entranced.
For every star that we can see,
A billion more have danced.
When we at last decide to go,
We stroll back down the hill
And thank our God, Producer of
This winter night's grand thrill.
Yen Cress
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26.
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Perspective
A lovely orange-and-black Gulf Fritillary
visits my garden,
looking for the passion vine
where she spent her youth.
Ah! There it is by the fence,
just as she seems to recall
from when she still had her spiky hairs,
before she got her glorious wings.
She stops just for a moment,
squeezes out a tiny egg,
and another,
and another,
and another,
each on its own five-fingered leaf,
as her mother had done.
Then she is gone.
The responsibilities of motherhood
have taken only a few moments
of her life.
But perhaps that's a very long time
in butterfly-years.
Yen Cress
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27.
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Questions for My Canary
Speck of yellow, cheery song,
Toothpick legs below,
Sweet canary in a cage,
How much do you know?
Do you know of warring men,
Know of fearful strife?
Battlefields in far-off lands?
Death by gun or knife?
When you eat your daily seeds,
Do you think of boys
Living out of garbage cans,
Never owning toys?
Do you know of little girls
Wearing rags for clothes?
Little bird in feathered dress,
What about all those?
Someone cleans your cage each day,
Gives you special treats.
Do you know of homeless babes
Living in the streets?
Happy bird, delightful chum,
Have you suffered pain?
Do you know the grief of death?
Have you loved in vain?
Do you think of sin and hell,
Sitting on your perch?
Is there guilt in someone who
Never goes to church?
Would you like to take my place,
Live as humans do?
Sheltered in your gilded cage,
What is life to you?
I have fear, and pain, and doubt,
Living out here, free.
But - a cage? I'd rather die!
Give me liberty!
Yen Cress
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28.
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Saguaro
With solemn arms upraised in rev'rent pose,
Each limb decked with a blooming amulet,
A worshipper, august in silhouette,
Stands staunchly silent, justly grandiose.
The supplicant knows no superior
Save one, the fiery deity of day,
Prepotent god, with cruel or gentle ray,
Who sets the fate of each inferior.
The starkly awesome land engenders fear
In hapless wand'rers lost within its bounds.
At night, when vision fails, weird unknown sounds
Bespeak horrendous monsters lurking near.
By day, no refuge offers cool relief.
No crystal fountains spring to quench the thirst
Of uninvited strangers, hotly cursed.
No sympathy consoles them in their grief.
Unmoving rocks and solid, rugged hills
Begin to heave and waver in the light.
A pool appears, then disappears from sight-
Imaginary aid that hope distills.
A parched, relentless wind blows through the gaps
Where rocks have ground away through endless years,
Revealing geographical frontiers,
Unconquered wilds uncharted on the maps.
Above, the solar majesty demands
Obeisance to his flaming, white-hot face.
Within his starkly sculpted holy place,
The worshippers fall prostrate on the sands.
One only, only one who comes to pray
Refuses to bow awestruck to his name.
Not one whit humble, never showing shame,
The tireless thorny arms uplifted stay.
The sun respects the cactus for its pride
And spares the life within its fibrous heart,
While those who pay due homage for their part,
He scorns with deadly beams and casts aside.
Yen Cress
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