the learned who chastise
the ignorance of others
while being unable to
stand correction themselves
are incapable of true knowledge
of the secular world
and of themselves
Tag: ignorance
A Hundred Years More
Once, I craved
the tartness of raspberries
and drowned myself
in operatic arias
I stepped twice
on cobblestones
to hear the echo
of my heels
The scent of lavender
brought me, again
to spring
though the flowers crumbled
in my fingers
I lived winter in ignorance.
Innocence
hiding in the shadow
of a boat bleached
by summer sun
a boy thinks only
of winning his game
of hide-and-seek
dreaming, he finds
a thrilling warmth
in abandoned wood
Family Lore
Were we to scramble up the crumbling steps
Of the red-shingled cottage by the sea
Smelling of salt and rain, and hollowed by moor cold
The peat moss with soft bulbous heads
Spread sleeping on the stone, a cushion for a mouse
And our bare toes, wrinkled by the long trek —
We would hear the rustling of the wind
Against the battered shutters left ajar
Abandoned like thieves in the dark
The luminescence of memories casting a wan glow
On nights spent gnawing on leather
And pulling spuds dark as stone from the ground
Handed down by a grandfather that never spoke
But did in the grimness of his lips
A history we dared to romanticize
Home
Home is built on the backs of people
Each brick and mortar paid for by years
Of laboring and amassing experience and wealth
As a child I only saw a comfortable den
Not knowing all the work that came before
Memento
The old mementos cease to be comforting
The look back at a rosy past
No longer forecast the same blissful future;
Ignorance once destroyed by knowledge
Cannot be pieced together whole again
Strangers on the Same Road
All people have gaps in their knowledge
But usually attribute that ignorance to others
And think that they, themselves, cannot be understood
But once they realize we are all similar
In our permutations of differences
They also realize those voids are meant to be filled
By the meeting of others
RED GLADIOLA 