by Scott Simpson
In the yard
that year we played,
we danced like patriots
until the afternoon our
strings and fingers stopped,
our voices caught,
we grew ashamed of
our own steps
even as we stared.
Brother came home
with one leg
missing—a flash in his eye
like the afterimage of a wing
clipped.
New songs descended
among us, or perhaps they rose
up from the soil where he planted
his crutch,
hymns both eternal and practical
for each of our waking
and sleeping moments
taking up residence on the
bitter tips
but never quite leaving
our tongues:
To whom do we owe,
this gracious honor of loss?
What place is there
that grows legs for grounded brothers?
Scott Simpson is a former high school teacher, college professor, camp director and lay-minister who attempts to live a contemplative lifestyle on a planet that views quietness and stillness as destructive ideas that could potentially undermine the fabric of society. He, indeed, hopes to undermine the fabric of that society with quietness and stillness. Scott lives on a planet called Earth. Scott's poems have appeared in Switched-On Gutenburg, BigCityLit, and New Verse News, and anthologized in In Praise of Pedagogy (2000, Calendar Press). You can listen to some of Scott's music and poetry on MySpace.
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