Your Ideal Man

Mourning

 Too Old, Too Young

When I'm too old to toil too young to die

I'll write some lines while my brain's still spry

not say in English gone fishing but Greek

a private joke only scholars find wry

Sing to me muses in tongues I can't speak

tone poems in languages I can't name

crystallize images happy or bleak

so my words can attribute blame or fame

Translate your meaning so I get your drift

Let me hear your music framing your chords

picture your meaning in words I can shift

into metrical patterns weaving your words

Sing to me muse with voice universal

each time I recite without rehearsal.

                                            Dick Russell, September 2021

 For Yvonne

 In August

 

 

Sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

Illumine and inspire waning armies of blood cells

worn out by attrition beyond years three score and ten

open my eyes to sequences never before given

while I edit them with my fingers

backspacing often with one hand hindered another still spry

chiseling words on a tombstone digitally printed 

taken from writing imaged on a screen

my brother’s name in big bold words

sounding this knell.

 

Illumine and inspire my genes

to signal I’m fit as a fiddle

I’ll make it to eighty uphill

which my brother would have been

 

steady as she goes no need for jazz 

no need for discordancy

just ambling along 

noticing

more than before

except when my eyes turn inward 

into DNA space

where highlights of past life are archived

how is a mystery to me?

 

Illumine and inspire me 

so I can keep making these songs

build me back from your archive better 

than ever I was before 

sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

 

 

 

Dick Russell

August 23^rd, 2021