Particularly Prolific

Poems I wrote on June 17, 1989, in order:

Five or six people in each age of men 
Express something true with the brush or the pen
And others repeat it, again and again.

And falsehood, if clothed in a nice-enough rhyme
Is also inscribed in the marble of time.

On Generations:

At seven, we wonder, and move things about.
At seventeen, we just try to get out.
At twenty-one, we begin to pursue.
At twenty-five through fifty, we do.
At fifty-one we begin to rule.

And after we've built and we've ruled, we rest
And decide that the days long gone by were the best
When our parents were building, and their parents ruled.
This we determine at seventy-two.

Now which perspective is actually true?
I think it's the one that we own while we do.
While we grapple with present necessities,
And our children store up memories.

Random musings:

#1
A flower from the nursery,
Meant to thrive in fertile soil,
Will sometimes bloom in rambling wood
If someone puts forth toil.

#2
Is the essence of a thought
With no meter and no rhyme
A poem in its infancy,
Or just a piece of time?

#3
At seventy-four, my mother-in-law
Remembers fondly and says it,
That people in old times would walk where they went,
Thinking nothing of it.

"The world's gotten wider ... and smaller," I told her,
And she agreed, then she said,
"The stores would close early at night and on Sunday."

"The world's gotten different," I said.

 

When we wait safely in the grave,
And our own sons are old and gray,
What will they think of longingly
About this unremarkable day?

---- Poems by Rani Kaye ---- All rights reserved.