Distant as Lost Loves
People walk the streets with troubled voices
crying out
crying out
as if God were as distant as their lost loves
as if He weren’t a seed
in the dark of their heart’s
growing in fertile waters.
A hard lesson
It must be learned
A very hard, painful lesson
Must be learned.
Tears moisten Him and Love blooms on His face
But my eyes are the pistal from a stalk of hurt-
my tears, the solemn fruit.
People walk the streets with troubled voices
crying out
crying out
An ancient commandment born
As Moses spoke to the people
separate currents chatted in his brain:
the Dog and the Sun
held court with the Universe.
The Dog barked and listed his rhetoric
while the Sun chimed down to meet him:
“Yes,” spake Moses. “This is so.”
They agreed:
“Don’t kill,” the Dog conceded, softening, there and then;
and the Sun, our star, then noticeably brightened
turning its shoulder to the Center Sun.
Rug Salesman
That one, it’s a Bhukara
from China, the most basic of all rugs-
some quite cheap, but well crafted- perfectly made.
That one is Turkish, the brightest blues of the sky.
And that one, it’s from Pakistan, a tighter weave like the morals of the people.
And that one- it’s a Persian
so big and brightly colored
it is the center of their lives-
its winding, intertwining patterns
around a luminous center
like how they think, how they work,
how they pray.
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 