Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

We mortals

Daniel  Moran
Webster, New Hampshire, United States

 

We long for
the perfection
in these things
of the world,
Life certain in
its bilateral symmetry,
Generations strung
like pearls on
an imagined wire.
We squint at the sun.
We marvel at the
plaintive syllables
of songbirds.
We admire
tallness and clarity.
Feeling the
vibrations of it all
beneath our feet,
We rhapsodize
distances suggested
upon moonless nights
daring to name the ineffable.
We write poems and
chant to the mysteries.
We dance round fires
in clearings we have
made in the forest.
We weep for the
spirits of fallen trees.
Facing death
we avert our eyes.
When great things succumb,
We tell ourselves
they were never there.
Thirsty, we lie on
our backs, allowing
our mouths to fill
with rainwater, and
hope to rise, like blossoms
from the dust.

 


 

DANIEL THOMAS MORAN, born in New York City in 1957, is the author of ten collections of poetry. His eleventh collection, “In the Kingdom of Autumn”, will be published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland in 2019. In 2005, he was appointed Poet Laureate by The Legislature of Suffolk County, New York. His collected papers are being archived by The Department of Special Collections at Stony Brook University. He is a retired Clinical Assistant Professor at Boston University’s School of Dental Medicine, where he delivered the Commencement Address in 2011. He is Arts Editor for The Humanist magazine in Washington, DC. He and his wife Karen live in Webster, New Hampshire.

 

Summer 2018   |  Sections  |  Poetry

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