Skorda's Seaside Taverna: 4/1/09

Skopelos and Virgin

-by Skorda

Swallow that campari moon
when first you see it
across the water,
rising round and new above the mountain.
Open your mouth and swallow
while youth holds its roundness near,
and you are running fearless in the dark.
Hold it inside, it is still warm
and you will need its light,
there, inside you.

Down the road of time, somewhere
after you’ve aged, traveled,
Explored, discovered.
And the dust around your doorway
has been pounded hard and smooth under your feet.
When you find yourself growing weary and bored,
when your eyes see only ruins,
and your heart is empty.
You may believe, in your exhaustion,
that this is truth, at last.
That the mystery has unraveled,
leaving no wilderness to explore or tame.
All secrets have been shared,
the frontier has dissolved.
Know then, with these thoughts,
you have been swallowed.

The warm belly of the beast
comforts with confining darkness
and lulls with rhythmic sounds
Murmuring to you,
Curl up and sleep,
just go to sleep.

Shake your head,
stretch your legs,
do not sleep now.

Remember what you know.
You swallowed the moon,
you hold it inside you.
Not as a magpie hoarding shiny things,
or wearing the moon for beauty
or bartering the moon for wealth.
You swallowed the moon for this moment.
When you will walk to the water’s edge,
open your mouth, release the moon
and let its light build you a pathway
across the wine dark sea.
©Skorda 2008

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Taxes

-by Edgar A. Guest

When they become due I don't like them at all.

Taxes look large be they ever so small
Taxes are debts which I venture to say,
No man or no woman is happy to pay.
I grumble about them, as most of us do.
For it seems that with taxes I never am through.

But when I reflect on the city I love,
With its sewers below and its pavements above,
And its schools and its parks where children may play,
I can see what I get for the money I pay,
And I say to myself: "Little joy would we know
If we kept all our money and spent it alone".

I couldn't build streets and I couldn't fight fire.
Policemen to guard us I never could hire.
A water department I couldn't maintain.
Instead of a city we'd still have a plain.
Then I look at the bill for the taxes they charge,
And I say to myself: "Well, that isn't so large".

I walk through a hospital thronged with the ill
And I find that it shrivels the size of my bill.
As in beauty and splendor my home city grows,
It is easy to see where my tax money goes.
And I say to myself: "If we lived hit and miss
And gave up our taxes, we couldn't do this".