Laurence Musgrove
After Me I don’t want to fight the world. Sure, there’s much I don’t like.Desire destroys our planet,And the powerless who batheIn the dirt and fear all dayCan easily be hidden from viewWhen the screens big and smallAre paid to show only the angryAnd more than one naked girl.What’s new and next will neverSatisfy the mind or the heartAs it breaks against a worldToo heavy to carry or leave behind. When I say peace, you say it, too. Sadness Let me take a moment for your sadness. I don’t know yours. I don’t even know mine. A dark pool and cold? A lost key? A wrong number? A name we can’t remember? A scab and a scar? You never had a chance to say goodbye. And the piano is ruined. Let me take a moment. Unfinished When I met the BuddhaOn the road, I was worriedHe would see the litterOf my wasted life behind me. All I wanted was for himTo whisper courageInto my exhausted heartSo I could make it to tomorrow. I was once afraid like you,He said, until I learnedTime is no sand in the glassOr even this road we share. Time is not a treeWith leaves upon the groundOr even the monsoonRavaging the hungry valley. Time is not a dying fireOr the moon chasingThe sun around the sky.Time is not a wheel. Time is not a bell.Not a ringing bowl.Time is not a shadowUnderneath a cloud. Time is not a memory.Time is not a dream.Time is not your children.Not your father’s coat. Time was never born.Time can never die.Time has no master.Time cannot hide. As I walked with the BuddhaDarkness followed close behind us.But on the long road before usThe sun melted and froze on the horizon. Laurence Musgrove is professor of English at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, where he teaches literature, creative writing, and composition studies. A new collection of poetry, Local Bird, is from Lamar University Press. His poetry has appeared in Concho River Review, descant, Elephant Journal, Sleet Magazine, Inside Higher Ed, Southern Indiana Review, and New Texas. He blogs at theillustratedprofessor.com and cartoons at texosophy.com.