In the Park
by Maxine Kumin
You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you’re a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
–you won’t know till you get there which to do.
He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park.He laid on me not doing anything.I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them.For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.
I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah,
Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels.Certain
animals converse with humans.
It’s a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven’s an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there’s a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,
and no choosing what to come back as.
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot.In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Dark Matter
- Владислав Ходасевич – Опять во тьме. У наших ног
- The Effect by Siegfried Sassoon
- In spring and summer winds may blow by Walter Savage Landor
- The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1 poem – Alexander Pope
- Before The Law by Michael Major
- Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston, South Carolina poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Михаил Кузмин – Трое (Нас было трое)
- Absence poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Make Love and War by Michael O’Leary
- At The Gate Of The Convent poem – Alfred Austin
- Diya {original title is Greek, Delta-iota-psi-alpha} poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
- Emotions in exile by Shailendra Chauhan
- The Crown Of Thorns
- How Sleep the Brave by Walter de la Mare
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
