Poems
Screaming Freedom, digital edition
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Firewater
Poems here are posted under a Creative Commons license. While all poems are free to read and use for non-commercial purposes, I welcome your support. |
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My river.
A friend’s ocean.
Each oil-mucked,
each has burned.
Cuyahoga, the Iroquois word
for crooked,
has come to mean
it, too, burns.
Gulf, hard, hollow Germanic,
may maintain its meaning
but gain context
to what it is that’s missing –
vibrancy in algae,
flushes of oxygen
from the sea.
Meanings, though, are not important.
Everything can be made to burn.
Our words become entangled
in a thicket of parched shrubs,
twigs and monied interests.
Our word for water
collects all that is dumped into it.
And with a spark,
we’ve got flames.
Tell fire it’s wrong.
Tell fire it’s bad.
Invalidate fire.
Abuse and oppress fire.
Still, fire gets rid
of what’s not needed.
We are fire.
Diffusion is primal
Like the ground’s deep warmth
that melts the first Ohio snow,
I am drawn from this soil,
compelled to the Pacific Northwest,
where my wheelchair
will find more traction in winter.
Ohioans make our own warmth
and tend it deep within ourselves
as protection from exposure.
But we must find a balance
and avoid melting the world.
Some of us must turn down our furnaces
and leave.
Nature stirs us
to where we can be useful
and to where we are needed,
like air to empty lungs
or friendship to frail hearts.
Soon, Ohio will freeze,
as it should.
And I will leave,
as I should.
We are driven
from one another
because the universe
is still growing
and we’re finding
our proper places.
The terms
Condensed thoughts
and lost breath –
get to know me
this way.
Synopsis
“Life on your own terms, “ he said before taking a sip of water. And I could tell that was the title of the latest thesis he’d composed in his head.
“You’ll find yourself liberated when you accept your mortality,” he said. “Just enjoy life while you’re living. Live well. Death will come when it will, and you can’t control that. So have fun, and when you die, it’s over. It–nothing matters. You’re dead. What do you care what others think of you? If you live well, you’re good.”
Then, he unfolded the newspaper.
Poems by Allen Michael Hines posted here are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. A few rights reserved.
