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Best Poems From
LAURENCE OVERMIRE
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137.
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Throwing Away The Key
Strip away your relationships
One by one
Friend by friend by friend
By lover by parent by child
Until all that is left
Is a broken soul
Alone.
Then, when you understand
And only then
Equipped with the necessary wisdom
Are you at any kind of liberty
To judge
The desperate actions
Of another.
(Previously published in Webstatic, Sept.1999; Zinos.com, July 2000)
Laurence Overmire
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138.
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Titanic
Two miles down
In the eerie dark depths
She sleeps
The cold current sweeps across the barnacled rails of the bow
Indifferently
Down the twisted staircase
And through the encrusted remains of the lower decks.
The shards of a teacup swirl in a tiny whirlpool of sand
While neon blue fish swim in and out of the portholed sockets of the hull
Oblivious to the terror of a fateful crossing
One midnight long ago.
The haunting screams of the dying
Forever echo far above
In the idle-busy world of men
But here
The stillness is sublime
A sacred resting
The quiet peaceful watch
Of eternity.
(Previously published by Red Coral,2000)
Laurence Overmire
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139.
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Tribute
My Father stands tall in my mind
Youd never know he was half-crippled
Stricken by polio in his younger days
Never mentioned it
Though it must have been painful
Pain was just something you had to get through
Dont fret the small stuff, my Dad would say.
Perhaps he knew something we didnt know
Saw his best friend laid out on the deck of a ship
Flag-draped corpses to litter the sea
Nineteen Forty-Five it was
Kamikaze flyers burst out of the sun
Exploded in fire
Torpedoed their honor in a final desperate sacrifice
To some un-holy God
The burning Bunker Hill
Lit like a funeral pyre upon a Viking sea
And young Dad, in the blackened decks below
Gasped for short lifes breath
A coffee soaked rag
Pressed to his lips
Made his way through the dark, twisted bowels of the ship
Past the screaming souls of the unlucky many
Till days light opened in sky before him
Taps never sounds
So sad a note
As to a survivor
Who cannot fathom his sentence to life
When his brave comrades lie unjustly charged
To death and the cold sea
And had but the hand of the fatal clock been just a
Tick or two off
He might have been where they were.
Yeah my Dad was the kind of guy whod stop and
Help a motorist at the side of a road
Or if he found a dollar just sitting on the floor
It wouldnt go into his pocket, but straight to Lost and
Found
He never made much money, never had a Cadillac
I guess he believed in something else, something kind of
Hard to buy
A life of the mind and the spirit
Understanding among men
All races, all creeds
Working, building
Together.
Some men build mansions ornamented gold
Some build monuments, proud testament to fame
And some men build much smaller things
Things you cannot touch or see
Like honor, justice, integrity
And love.
Yet these things I have felt and seen
Passed in wisdom from father to son
And I only hope my childrens children
Shall find the same in me.
(Previously published by The Penwood Review, Vol.3, No.2, Fall '99; Honor and Remembrance, Indelible Mark Publishing,2007)
Laurence Overmire
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140.
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Unfinished Symphony
We were told somehow
Creation happened a
Long, long, time ago
But look around you
Each day brings
Things not seen or heard before
With each revolution of moon and star
The Creator is constantly
Sculpting new life out of the dust
New heavens to behold
Our world is a dream
Spinning on the potters wheel
Ever wondrous, sometimes frightening
But always, in process
Of becoming
More.
(Previously published in Smile Magazine, Fall 1999, no.25)
Laurence Overmire
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