David MurphyDesert Revival
We once were all in desert dry:
scorched by sun, parched by thirst,
we’d thought that here we’d die.
But when the night came coolly
we felt we’d weathered the worst.
Our zest it quickened duly,
as life extended, untraversed.
Revelers swing round lamp posts;
snow flakes swirl through the air;
street lamps cast golden circles;
church bells sound in the square.
We spent the last penny in our pockets
on a drink we shared in the bar;
now night has cloaked us in darkness;
the city lights are glimmering stars.
Warehouses are shut and forbidding;
a train stops with a screech and a hiss.
We stand by the cold quick river;
I brush snow from your cheek and we kiss.
This old American town tonight
was never once so bright by day;
the cruel agonies that color our lives
have faded to a harmless grey.
In the churchyard the graves are cracked and crooked;
it’s where friends and family lay remembered;
all their smiles and laughs still treasured
on this snowy twenty-fourth December.
We’d keep the parlor lit by soft light;
while music played, shadows danced on the wall.
I knew the good times could never last forever;
I just never knew how quickly they could fall.
But night brings charming dreams anew,
and when dawn comes they’re with me still;
I’ll share them with you this Christmas Day;
we’ll let hope shepherd us, come whatever will.
Our hope rises like a strong wind,
buoying us as we ascend
from gloomy fogs we’re loathe to fly
into a clear and better sky,
one where fewer troubles attend.
From lonely walks with tragic ends
to crowded tracks among cold friends
where we’ve left our own dreams to die,
our hope rises.
Even as we misapprehend,
stumble, fail at making amends,
and live a self-evident lie,
still, if we but honor and try
to be noble before life ends
our hope rises.
Near numerous and luminous as stars,
And a sign of things healthy and morbid
(Depending on the case and cultivar),
Is the almost ubiquitous orchid.
A flower of finely perfumed fragrance,
It is stylish in every quick season:
To be found in buttonholes in romance
And, in mourning, adorning the coffin.
Not even the well-known, august rose
Can boast such flexibility and scope
Compared with the manifold forms of those
Orchids that stand both for grief and for hope.
Here we work like a mill
Striding every day uphill.
Our hands are callused, our backs half-broke,
We chuckle at hope, that indecent joke;
We grin at love as it slips away,
Laugh at life and the hard day
Because the words to the song of gladness
Go like this: C’est la vie and to hell with sadness!
He’s got nowhere to go
Nothing to live for
Nothing left to show
Nothing in his core
He walks like a ghost
Silent, unseen
Like something from the past
That might never have been.
Now the wind in the alley
Blows paper in the gutter
There’s shadows in the valley
And a dark rumbling mutter.
It’s another cold night
In this evil broken place
With unlit street lights
Over every haggard face.
Now here comes dawn
The dangerous night ends again
We start it with a yawn
Then hurl ourselves in.
And there goes the man
Who somehow lost his way
He’s changed and made a plan.
Each dawn is a new day.
“The Stars Above” is a poem about those nights when you lie on your back, looking at the stars, wondering whether there is life out there, and whether that life can hope and love and dream of other life too.
Its rhyme scheme is aabb.
And when I to suit my fancy lie
Beneath the tree and darkened sky
And watch with wondering eyes the stars
That glimmer through the night’s short hours
And find there the constellations bright
With Grecian myths of astral light
I wonder if in the twinkling air
There might be other life up there
For while I lay thinking on our great world
One not much larger than an azure pearl
I send my thoughts to a far, empyrean shore
Where no manmade craft has gone before
And stretching out my hand and mind
I hope to greet one of like kind
One whose curiosity about space
Extends beyond the limits of their race
And lets them dream of far-off lands
With quiescent oceans and rocky sands
Where sentient beings far above
Hopefully can think and dream and love.
An old green glass bottle is opened at a lakeside party. Fireworks burst in the night. Above the revelers, a good spirit sits upon the clouds, fishing for kind deeds and words.
The poem is written in free verse.
An old olive green bottle with its label faded and worn
Is shaken by its neck. Its contents churn and whisk.
Its settlings rise up and whirl in the heaving swirl.
There’s a sharp pop as its cork is unstoppered,
Then an eddying flow as the amber liquid is poured.
From out its mouth comes a dear beverage
That fills the glasses which are toasted
To fireworks in the night sky and which set to riot
The lakeside revelers who dance beneath
Moonsilvered racks of billowing clouds.
Up above them, a good spirit is fishing.
He’s dropped his line from the sky to earth.
His beard is of curled cloud, and his eyes are twinkling stars.
His body is made of mist.
From time to time he catches, from the people below,
What he’s fishing for:
A kind word, a bit of hope,
Something to lead another
Through dark days.
He reels up such a catch, this kind spirit, and he
Observes what he’s got, there on the end of the line.
It glimmers, gleams, and shines.
When he laughs, he laughs with joy,
And all go running to get out the coming rain,
For they can hear the thunder rumbling
High above.
