Red-stained hands crush flowers
back into buds, and cut the wings
from birds so they'll fit in eggs:
that's what it takes to make a live thing shrink.
It takes the sucking lamprey mouths of greed
and envy. It takes the collapsed
coal-mine mass of fear and hate
to make a live thing shrink.
Yes, they shrank us.
But now the rain has come and we are bursting up out of the ground like strange mushrooms and boiling like brine shrimp out of dry lake beds and filling the sky like vast flocks of crows circling over empty lots and calling out in wild voices and we are changed and we are countless and one size does not fit us all
and the size we are today
is not the size we were yesterday
and tomorrow is the size of the sky and the wind.
Collection available! Knocking from Inside
Friday, November 07, 2008
The Size of the Wind
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7 comments:
This is almost too beautiful to need any comments. It addresses the powers of greed and the burgeoning of new hope in language that soars and inspires.
Beautiful piece of writing.
No limits to the extent of changes we are manipulated to endure.
'Boiling like brine-shrimp ..... it's odd how one can have no idea what a line means (geographically) and yet see a picture of it!
Starting right from your title, this poem sings! I especially like how you changed the format to prose for part of it. Clever and exuberant!
This was a joy to read. I especially like the way you marked the change. BJ
What an incredible piece of writing; it was a true pleasure to read.
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