Thom Garzone

 

SHARING A GIFT OF LIFE

 

            To work principles for his first steps

to share as though his first words

            winning hearts

            suspending new encumbered struggles

I had mused that prosperity would spawn from recovery

            for him

            for me

            for those entangled w/ vices

            that clench upon their souls

yet now secure in a hospital bed

            surviving in ICU

            My good friend had received the call

and told us the blessing that Jon was still among us,

The last time I saw Jon he had asked me to be his sponsor

17 years ago, and the next thing I remember was saying yes,

            or thinking that’s what I meant

            Weeks ago Jon was captured on video

            learning his literal steps

            aided by nurses & orderlies

with the hope of one day working them

MIGRATION

 

Traffic on the “connecter” bottlenecks to seem just as an accident

or road construction.  Police barricades and lighted signs

blink the words: “River Street Closed, Right Lane Closed.”

Flashing in front of my Friday routine, cars slow and pass Cooper Court

when I realize homeless are being evicted, causing the backup on I-184.

Next I question how 150 vagrants could hinder motorists on a freeway,

pondering how the planet is not free.

Police mark the abandoned tents with “BPD” for perhaps Bad Policy Decisions,

or Banal Primary Destitution.

At 13^th and Front Street mobs of broken souls linger away from

their former dwelling, burdened by social oxymorons, melting like frost

into dew, into subhuman, erroneous embers dying, smoldering upon daylight's irony.

At my health center steam room, a man, also forced from his

makeshift lodge, seems too similar to the rest of us bathing, just as Whitman may had,

bearded, wise, communing with fate and time while the needy

are driven out of hovels like diseased rats.

The next day our newspaper's front page shows the exodus, an ousted street person

with a puppy mounted on his shoulder, a wave of the disenfranchised rears up

on downtown, though many of us return from work to heated homes and have supper,

epitomized in roles, and I wonder at the puzzle of imbalance

within the human condition to search for some speck of harmony.

THE HUMAN MIGRATION

 

Movement is essential to life

            to evolve, progress forward

            not to stagnate, be idle

            but to forge ahead with time

So is the culture of this planet

            always moving, growing, sharing our differences

 

As I look over the Treasure Valley of Idaho

            I ponder the Shoshone, Paiute, Bannock, and Kootenai natives

who had dwelt on the loam of the land’s spirit

            once along pristine rivers

            yet had migrated from farther continents

And when Lewis and Clark brought settlers

            citizens joined together to deliver this country with ideas

            harmonizing in unison

When Italian, Irish, German, Swedish, Asian, Middle Eastern

            immigrants and others embarked off docks,

            we joined to build a

            fortress on colonies

            a citadel over a nation

Then let us next form unity from whence were broken, sick,

            persecuted, suffering, inflicted by famine,

lost, poor, fleeing conflict, & deprived of freedom

            Let us find a nucleus linking the vigor

of our souls within vessels of promise that brought us

            to destiny’s depths in our hearts

            to believe

            discover

            make laws

            prosper

and coexist