From the Wreckage

author's note:

Actually, I think this is a good poem for the beginning of Spring.


FROM THE WRECKAGE

As I watch the shattered jet
smolder in a field...

I notice the wreckage resembles a cross

and begin to wonder if
I'm only using this crash
to mourn my own private losses--

I had to kill
so many childish kings
with their commands and castle dreams
so that my kingly child might live:

this slow painful sacrifice
is still in progress--

no, I haven't quite arrived
at that new life.

But though I've reason to mourn
I'm ashamed to have descended
into self-pity
while witnessing a tragedy

however...

this release of grief
opens a well of feeling

and so, I suddenly swell
with true empathy for the many
who'll be deep-struck
by the shock of this loss

then realize:
we're together in grief

and also
together in hope:

as a woman wearing a hood
lifts a baby from the ashes
an artesian tear rises in my eye:

though I know a shadow
will haunt that child
from this time forward...

when I see
that small tear-streaked face
I again believe
in the new life
that follows in the wake
of all our sacrifice.

© 2017, Michael R. Patton
Butterfly Soul: poems of death and grief and joy

Cathy Caffeine

author’s note:

It's become my tradition to post this poem, every year, in honor of International Women's Day.


CATHY CAFFEINE

This poem commemorates
the obscure child book character
Cathy Caffeine:

the tug boat
that volunteered to tow a skyscraper
over the oceans
from Shanghai to Manhattan--

a proud prow willing to drink
galleons and galleons of coffee
in a valiant effort to keep
her steam pressure up.

No one ever noticed her
despite the sun flag on her mast
despite a heart
she had enlarged
in order to pump squall waters
from the furnace room.

No one ever heard her engine groan--
they only saw the skyscraper
sliding smoothly through seas
that bucked and brayed:

the edifice gliding
as if guided by a god.

But since no god
ever appeared before them
people came to believe
the skyscraper might be
a god itself.

From such mass opinion
Cathy Caffeine concluded
she'd done nothing of consequence--
     despite the pain
     in her main beam,
     a pain that ran
     from stern to bow--

she still believes she followed
a monumental monument
even though
that momentary monument
always shadowed her.

The Cathy of this child book story...

can be found all over the world--
can’t we see them?--look:
how the churn
of their propellers
gives the planet
its spin.


© 2017, Michael R. Patton
Survival: the book