It is not a time for shopkeeper souls, a poem

It is not a time for those with shopkeeper souls

Meticulous in their ways

Whose daily commutes are ruined

By signs of closed businesses, foreclosed homes

Affronts leading them to drive down more fortunate streets

How to disarm those on

Such a monotonous, finite journey?

Should we fling the sand of Iraq in their faces

Or the mud of tent cities?

Those shopkeeper souls

Whose daily tallies reckon not with the invisible

Never seeking beyond what appears

(So carefully controlled)

Pouting when disturbed by

The sound and sight of others’ suffering

(So carefully avoided)

Shopkeeper souls think not

There but for the grace of God go I

But mutter

Why don’t they pull themselves up by their bootstraps

It is time for the infinite,

The grace of those whose souls dance

Extending a hand , willing to fall

Getting down in the dirt

Eye level with people, not numbers

Seeing them as souls

Not tallying, but rallying

The spirits of the suffering

Embracing reality on every corner

Walking down every street

It is not a time for shopkeeper souls

Wonderful how you people get around -a poem

Its wonderful how you people get around these days, the older woman said

She touched the sports bottle on my wheelchair and asked

What’s this

I explain it’s a bottle with a straw I drink from

How clever! Does anyone ever try to drink out of it she asks, laughing

My cat, I say

She stops, looks at me, says oh, does he really

All the time I say

The nurse behind the desk has her hand over her mouth muffling laughter

Do you let him the older woman asks

I can’t stop him I’m paralyzed I say

Well - what about people, she asks, almost defensively

No, people don’t try to drink out of it. At least not yet, I say, wondering if she's thirsty

Rolling over pinecones

The wheelchair crunches leaves, grass, sandwich wrappers

Rolls over pinecones

Stuck midair on a tree root,

A precipice

It rights itself with a bang.

A squirrel nibbling a nut stares wide-eyed

Human television in the wild.

Dark Knight of the Soul

He rides high in his saddle, this
Young knight, kicking dirt off his boots
From villages full of peasants he finds
Unworthy of his visage.

"Your name, sir?"
A quivering child asks at the inn
"Which of the heroic knights are you?"
He slaps her away and sits by the fire
Near a minstrel singing
Tales of far away lands and brave knights
With deeds well known

Nay, no mention of his name
Which plagues him as he lays down each night under the stars
Staring up to the heavens as the years go by
Wondering when his glorious moment will come.
He rides into forests challenging wolves
Hoping for mysterious dreaded beasts or damsels in distress
Around each copse of trees
But ignores the plight of the peasants
Despite floods and famine and attacks by intruders
No matter how they beg
It is none of his affair.

He dons his armor each daybreak
Glinting from polish, nary a dent on it sadly
No blood, no gore, no mark
Pure as the day the blacksmith made it
Mounts his steed and sets out to find work worthy of his knighthood

But there is little to do it seems
His fellow knights have beat him to it
Wearing the tokens of their damsels
And earning special favor with the king
While he must be content with tournament wins
And patiently waiting for an act worthy of his prowess

Until the day - finally - he hears a scream in the forest
And turns to see the blade of a villain across the neck of a lady
Who is weeping - just as he imagined a damsel in distress would.
He charges toward them, his helmet plate down
His weapon leveled and cries "Release her, sir or suffer the perils of dismemberment"
(A line he rehearsed as a schoolboy but perhaps should have tweaked)
The villain releases the damsel and turns toward the knight, sword raised
"Your name, sir?" he asks
"I do not recognize you"
The knight stops suddenly, realizing the villain is the king's brother
And with that rides off, another heroic deed denied

The knight lives a long and healthy life
Patrolling the uneventful forest full of squirrels and rabbits
No beasts or ghosts to be found
Eventually he dies of gout
In an inn where no one recognizes him
Where tales of brave deeds are sung
Of other knights
Much luckier than him.

It is not the rose's fault - a poem

I remember yellow roses in his hand

As he feeds me brie and berries

Under a cherry tree

Pink petals landing on his hair

After my lover died

Someone told me that if I tried harder

I wouldn’t be so paralyzed

They didn’t want to feed me

I suppose

A gardener clipping a rose bush avoids the thorns

Learns unnecessary pain is a child’s game

That spilt blood blends with red roses

It is not the rose’s fault

Nothing comes of supposition in the realm of gravity

for those who think the degree of paralysis

can be controlled by whim

What might they say about

such grounded things as thorns?

Put the gloves away

bleed red on red if you must

I choose yellow and pink roses

Watching petals float higher than my arm can reach

Poem from March 21, 2011

I'm catching up on posting a few things here :)


You await me in the stillness of
Ever present peace
Yes I pray
Yearning all day
For silence

Ruth Harrigan Copyright 2011

Praying in Gardens : a poem

Dear Mother Earth

the rain cannot should not be hail now

not in April when early coral bells silently struggle to bloom.

Tiny rosebuds peek out

from weedy coils wrapped round

dirty fingernails,

as thorns draw blood

from flesh

-oh where did I put the garden gloves-

a prickly rose red with blood now

crowns the garden

A reminder that

He whose Life was not cut short

His spirit being eternally begotten

taught us to pray in gardens