(In honor of the anniversary of Mark Twain’s passing, April 21st, 1910; and in hopes that we can hear and move beyond the repercussions of the world he wrote in.)
How many times we listened
To the lap and flow, the bullets
Or the rain. How many times
By one camp fire –
No green wood grain,
But only old, ancient trees
Will pass their life of blessing
Without smoke.
If only we could hear those trees –
We are young, and made of smoke.
If only we could hear this river-sea –
This could be our mother, out here.
This could be return
Down to the sea.
Instead, we float between nations –
We drift through the middle of death.
It’s secret, like the words adults keep
From children; and the secret
Creeping dreams the children keep
From all adults.
We are both children and the old,
Upon this raft: we are all
Corpses hid with rats and gold,
Starched like sheets.
We are all of these:
Quick and dead, friend and feud –
Dogs, widow, or house afloat,
Filled
By one dead father.
None of us remember where
We hid the gold.
None of us can say where
We’re bound –
The books that Huck Finn
Learned to write,
Along Death’s boundary:
This Mississippi –
Let’s you and I read fast,
Adrift this raft.
Skeleton At The Feast 