David Dephy: Three Poems

MAIDEN LANE DAWN

Silence tomorrow, but tonight, the sky is clear,
no wind, nothing, the stars shine, see that?
Still, the song echoes, you know a song enough
to drown the notes in silence as the seeds.

Warm breeze appears, as the answer to a prayer,
this morning. Maiden Lane drifts on the rays
in lower Manhattan. See the man in the street?
That’s me, who still believes everything is
in many ways our breath. Yet he still turns his breath
into a prayer, and dawn, that embraces him, right there,
remembers that second, when he was a kid,
standing alone in front of the man with the machine gun,
and closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and made
his first wish looking right into the heart
of his own future.

*

WE WERE RUNNING

We are running on the edge of hope.
Surfacing the edge of fears, time is near,
we are ready to meet dawn; time is breath.

We were always running out of breath,
as we ran out to kiss the second, we knew it,
for one second, that it was difficult to lose time

seating on the bay shore, hoping for easy ride.
Easy if we played, smoked, and drank to forget,
to hope, to remember—

when we felt that edge of hope and fears,
the shadows of the night’s chasm and mountains,
with a song, we made sense of us.

*

AS THE BREATH OF A MOTHER

Silence is a spirit of word.
This night shadow drifts on the field as usual
sliding for a bit at the oak tree right in the center
of the night where it often sees itself surrounded
by the smells and fliting glimpse to feel if it finds
any transfiguration.

My shadow looks at every leaf and the whole
body of a tree, it sees me, the same human being,
with the same heart—
the familiar outlines of life still clinging to it.
The oak tree seems, surrounded by night,
naked and close,

as the breath of a mother, that’s my outlines
drift again in the dark, it thinks—
everything in the dark is in some way a family
by faith. Shadows never slide alone,
turning that breath into a song.
Then dawn appears, on the edge of the field,

as the echo of silence, and the world is naked
at dawn, no one sees anymore how beautiful
that field was, but my shadow remembers, also,
that the oak tree embraced it, right here, slowly
drifting on the field watching the dark water
flashing on its velvet softness.

 

Photo credit:  Ru Chita

painting of a woman sitting on the cover of Easter Star by David Dephy
Eastern Star by David Dephy

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