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
- Алексей Николаевич Толстой – Весенний дождь
- Юнна Мориц – Страна вагонная, вагонное терпенье
- Diving Into The Wreck
- Нина Воронель – Высокосный год
- Sonnet 150: O from what power hast thou this powerful might by William Shakespeare
- My Girl she’s Airy: A Fragment by Robert Burns
- On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica by William Cowper
- Владимир Высоцкий – Песня о планах
- We know this much by Sappho
- Владимир Бенедиктов – Светлые ночи
- To a Gentleman, Who Married His Cast Mistress by William Somervile
- The Thorns In The Geäte by William Barnes
- Two Songs By Sitara Of Kashmir
- The Cat’s Song by Marge Piercy
- Алексей Толстой – Сижу да гляжу я всe, братцы, вон в эту сторонку
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).
