V  P  R

VALPARAISO POETRY REVIEW
Contemporary Poetry and Poetics



 
 

~GREG KEELER~



OUR PLEASANT ASSASSINS


 

Live the way the leaves teach us, season
to river, river to heart, reflection to flux.
To see a sky through brittle twigs is reason
enough to keep living beyond despair at the crux
where seasons meet.  That the girl lives too long
in the woman matters little to the waterfall
where she returns to bathe and learn a song
possible only in the purity of her dreams.  All
the sad world falls away here, and the present
is the red on the wing of a blackbird calling "for free,
for free" over the diminishing years.  Our pleasant
assassins wait in pictures of our past.  To be
present in the world, we learn to love their youth
and grace.  In the face of age, we learn the truth.

 
 

© by Greg Keeler
 
 


 

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