Shall We Gather? (JG)

 In 2044, I’ll be 94. 

Every bookstore 
will be a graveyard for books.   
Reading will be dead.  

I’ll be in a wheel chair 
looking at the grave 
of all my books.  

You’ll be standing next to me  
and I’ll ask you to sing 
“Shall We Gather at the River.”

You’ll sing it 
like God is listening.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gather alone or together (MS)

  In 2144, I’ll be very dead,  not there's any other form of dead. I'm buried in a bookstore, not in the classics section nor under poetry.  I'm under a Clearance Sale banner. You’ll be buried in the Van Gogh, Dickinson, Thoreau section for those fully discovered long after death. I ask you to sing The Sound of Silence. You’ll say you don't know it then you sing the whole song. Hello darkness, my old friend.
Read more

Never-ending beginning (MS)

the clearing in the forest light as dark day is night life or day rest in golden hay harvested in summer heat nothing there now said the dying, reborn page here's something new we can pack up and go leaving a never-ending poem in our wake at our wake and there is no death.
Read more

The Deer (JG)

Outside the window a deer bends to the grass,  opens its mouth,  bites the brown grass  waiting there for spring. I want to say I’m waiting too,  waiting for some spring,  waiting for the day  like no other day,  but those are lost somewhere,  lost in memory,  a locked room. The deer hears me  behind the window and looks up.   His eyes see me, see everything.   He turns his head and moves further down the hill.
Read more