No. 3

Fall 2002

The backyard's birch scuffed
with scars of lopped branches
grows an inch a year,
a totem of lament in winter,
of hope's scatter of green this spring.
How choose between these sentiments?
Why? If the question is asked,
must it then be answered
with a look of blank incomprehension
or not at all? Here's reality's rub,
that we don't feel its scrape
until the bone shows through --

so bright, its never-healing,
as to entrance us. We're aware
the heart beats despite us,
the mind's cacophony never rests
and serendipity is earned, when one says:
Enlightenment is an accident.
Practice makes one accident prone.
Like five year olds learning to bike,
we fall, skin knees, look askance,
These are not the accidents
you had in mind? Are told:
But I had nothing in mind

Copyright 2002, Cynthia Hogue

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.