“Madness” “Yellowstone” “Regret” “Matthew Shepherd” and “Owl”

By Steven Pelcman

Madness

If everyone spoke aloud

To themselves you’d think

The world mad, yet when

My mother speaks to herself

I wonder why and question

If she is going mad. I stand

In the dark as she drifts away

Shuffling as if her back

Were humped and the squared

Patterned floor was speaking

To her sharing secrets only

It could know, stories of pacing

When a husband lies dying,

When a daughter died young,

When her memories haunted her,

When the only true friend was a floor

She knew would hear her confessions

And not judge, or complain or

Speak back, a trust you cannot know

Or look away at.

Even in the dark you know what lies

Beneath your feet, what holds you up,

She is small enough to cheat her shadow

Into thinking she is not there but her words

And the sounds she will leave will vibrate

With her slow, gentle passage so that

When you pass this way, you may hear

Her words beneath your feet.

____

Yellowstone

On a cliff where the sky

meets pine, spruce and aspen

full of lost souls upright and voices

lost in time, the grunts of bison

and Native chants rising above the

smoke, fills the valley below.

With eyes closed you can feel

The earth spinning, the movement of clouds,

The sound of hooves trampling the land,

The flight of eagles soaring

The cold, dark shadows of bears,

Eyes and snouts and frozen breaths.

It is the stuff of dreams, large enough

To call it freedom, small enough

To want to possess it, to smell the sulfide

And be hypnotized by the thermal springs

And geysers, imagining another planet

Undiscovered, lost in space.

Here, disease has killed trees and men

Mountain lakes as rough as seas, volcanoes

Secretly waiting, bighorn sheep and elk

Colliding, wolves tracking and slithering

Through thick forest, mountain lions

As impatient as little children wandering off.

It is the history of a country the world

Did not know or understand, of men

In buckskin setting traps, of the earth warm

And shaking beneath the feet of Natives

For thousands of years now watching the

Steady stream of cars where once the single file

Of bison or deer crossed the frozen land

In search of food or Indians waiting for a herd

Of bison to pass and hold their lances at angles

Ready to ride alongside or wear bearskins to mingle

Among the shaggy beasts planning to kill to survive

To keep their culture alive.

____

Regret

The impatience of the man

Showed every time he listened

To contrary words that settled

In the dimples on his face,

In his cleft chin, in his aging lines

Which he swatted away like flies

Avoiding something rotten.

His anger turned inward and floated

Through his blue bulging veins and

Shaking hands, the eyes that narrowed

And his eyebrows that raised and remained

Settled, the way a clown impresses the crowd.

His throat filled with air, and you felt silence,

A gulp emulating fish seeking shelter or food

But his muted language left an empty mouth

And a slithering tongue that curled a serpent

Dance as he bit his lips and held back

The explosion that tumbled within him.

Bitterness put fire in Grandfather’s belly

But he was a shell of a man ghosted and living

The death of others, his thin frame wore them,

Bodies like clothing too baggy, hiding the shame

Of surviving, eating food that moved like bugs

Dreams that saw him falling onto charred bodies

Squiggling like worms, begging, crawling, crying.

Those who say the Holocaust never happened

Cannot feel the gas spreading into their lungs,

They cannot know how fire consumes everything,

A smile, a toy, a marriage certificate, family

Photos that speak generations.

He cannot speak or love or be happy, but he can

Remember and share the pain in silence, he can

Hide within his nightmares and run, run, run

Hoping to catch up with a child, a wife, a grandmother,

The things we do to survive, the way we must define a life

Knowing that regret is deeper than a grave.

____

Matthew Shepherd

The consecrated ground that Matthew lies in

Was not how he expected to end that day,

But his bloody body beaten till his soul

Surrendered to the ignorance and hatred

He must have felt when others marked him

For the pain he endured in being himself.

Saint Joseph’s Chapel forgave him as did God

When he reached out knowing that there are

No differences in loving, in the kindness of

Being loved for who you are. The fence that

Protects him in the churchly dirt that the vandals

Who desecrated him at first will not give way

And his voice rises above the deep shadows

And the dark fears that other men may have.

Matthew, ashes interred in peace, in Washington’s Cathedral

did not die for others, instead, he lived for those

That nurtured goodness hoping that other young men

Will not feel the anger of those too afraid

To understand, too afraid to ward off the poison

Of society that brands men evil when God accepts them.

The night wind carries his voice in holy

Safety so that we can mourn and pray,

So that Matthew can forgive us, forgive

All men so that all men can forgive themselves.

____

Owl

There is an owl,

Framed in oak,

Its brooding eyes

Buried in blackness,

Patient on branches

Stiff in a gentle wind

As its trophy physique

Perched in magic

And mystery, it hoots

As a prayer asking

For forgiveness or

A warning in the dark

Or perhaps it is protection

It renders in those dark eyes

Full of holy reflections where souls

Are reborn in feathery, silent flight,

Its beak A guiding light

To salvation. 

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