No Guarantees
What will you
do now?
Life is a journey
sometimes walked in light
sometimes in shadow
The price is sorrow and loss
with occasional dividends
revealed in joy that may not cover
all that went before
The only guarantee
is exactly more of the
same
in measure
some generous and some
maddeningly spare
and brief
No thief would steal such a thing
yet we steal from each other
all the time
What will you do now?
You have trapezed
yourself
out of a great many heart aches
while planning and holding on
to far too many more
You have insulted
the keeper of the flame
trashed the roadmap
shredded the flowers along the path
stomped on the toes
of one who would
have
helped you find the way
What will you do now?
Assault
It happened again
another attack
by little white things
tumbling out of the gray sky
So cold
so wet as they hit the ground
casualties mount all around
uncountable victims
forming a slushy white blanket
Blind metal beasts
slip and slide along
try to act like
nothing is happening
lose their grip
lose control
as the little white things
make their headlong dash
to perish on the ground
Under assault
we protect ourselves
as best we can
jackets, gloves, hats
and warm boots
we dash from warm place
to warm place
wait for the onslaught to cease
and the white blanket
of tiny corpses
to melt away into oblivion
The Death of Sandlot Baseball
I drove by several times
before I recognized it
a flashback to boyhood years
hidden under high weeds
marked with rusty chain link
low mound in the middle
framed by fading lines
hammered into hard dirt by
years of young feet running
Memories of youthful joy
still lived within me
a favorite activity
a pastime almost obsession
anywhere and anytime
anyone who would play
always a welcome new friend
we lived the game
and it lived in us
Now older gone gray
our passion failed to convey
the game's allure lost
for those who followed
weeds grew and fields faded away
Then it was gone
that reminder recently found
victim to neglect
lost to changing times
scraped clear to bare dirt
buried under urban profit
new houses enclosed
by high brick walls
that shut out the world
I was
born in S. California in 1950 near Los Angeles and grew up near San
Bernardino. I survived polio in the early 1950s and recovered with
no lasting effects.
The time
I spent unable to be active,
I learned to love reading. I have two
younger sisters. One lives near Melbourne, Australia, the other
lives in Redlands, California.
I
attended
Chaffey
Community College, obtaining an Associate’s Degree in Geology in
1970. I transferred to Cal State San Diego, but dropped out for lack
of funds. I got a job as an analytical chemist in 1975 and worked in
that field for the next 23 years. In 1980, I got married. We had a
daughter in 1986. In 1991, we moved S. Calif
to Denver and later divorced.
In the
1980s I began to be interested in writing. In the early 1990s I
wrote song lyrics and arranged them into music for the acoustic
guitar. I began submitting my poetry to competitions in 1994 and
have won some awards. I joined Columbine Poets of Colorado four
years ago and have been participating in their Saturday morning
workshops. It has greatly helped my confidence as a poet. Two years
ago, I edited a member’s anthology for Columbine Poets to celebrate
their 25th anniversary. It was called
The
Silver Lode.
After that I completed a manuscript for my first chapbook to be
published. It is called Crow
Dreaming. Unfortunately, I still haven’t had the
resources to get it published, so I decided to release it as a CD of
spoken poetry. That was two weeks ago. I am now working on the next
CD and expect it to be ready this weekend. I have a large store of
unpublished poetry to draw from. I am also appearing at open
mic poetry readings as often as
possible.
Contact
Edward Hanson |
