AndyPosner.org

Be Wary of Sadness in Dark Times

Andy 1 min read
poetry
Be Wary of Sadness in Dark Times
Photo taken Sunday, September 29, 2019

I notice my parents’ aging as I do my own:
Not at all, then in a photo, all at once.

I blink and seasons, eons have passed.
Now Winter speaks to me, her voice
a groan of boilers straining against cold—

Don’t be sad. Doesn’t the frost remind
of home? Of baking piroshki with Baba?

On sluggish mornings such as this, when
the sun sweats to warm the chilly earth,
I wonder what my napping son is dreaming,
what he will ask when he grows old—

Remember that photo of Grandpa and Baba?
They are smiling and, though it’s getting dark, I smile back.
What was it you wrote about America and hope?

(So much happens when we’re asleep;
One morning I awoke to an altered Earth.)

You’ve begun to stir. I hear your happy babbling.
This darkness is heavy; I won’t let it crush you too.

More poetry

All →
poetry

Diary

Ages ago I kept a diary in a hand legible to
none but me. I read it on my knees as just-fallen

rain clings to pinecones like wet feathers,
the evening slips into its velvet gown,

and starlight pitter-patters on my head
like drops of gallium. I am thankful

the day is dying, for I have forgotten how
to live. Who wrote those words belongs

to an empire that collapsed under its
own grandiose weight, its high priest

· 1 min read
poetry

Enlightenment

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging
sense that

· 1 min read
poetry

Foul Weather Friend

I am a foul weather friend, dear poetry.
I have paid you no mind when spring rains
wash clean the marble statues of gods
and a cheery sun
reads aloud your sweet inscriptions,
nor when awed children skip through museums,
nor accordion-song fills the subway,
nor a stranger does another stranger
a kindness,
nor blueberries are so ripe they bleed sugar,
nor velvet chocolate cake knocks you dizzy with love,
nor, after making love, my wife’s perfume
clings

· 1 min read