Weekly Contest
Classic poem of the day
In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter — the browns of earth,
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.
member poem of the day
buildings
corrupted in the dark
mixed with the light
of strangers
*
hurried feet
step by step on pavement—
and the dirt is deep
as little by little
they mark their souls
*
organism of souls
who have their moment
and sink back down
to dark oblivion
*
steam in the streets
with century old pipes bursting—
dreams of the riders
new as the city is old
*
dark and still
the buildings watch
the empty streets below
as people gather
in windows, unaware
*
soon there...
