Days of Awe

The Future

An airplane cruises above the clouds.
A stiff silver goddess, its arms spread wide,
it hums like a madonna singing hallelujah.

The puddles fill with rainbows of grease;
the cattails by the stream are microphones
into which the bees softly speak.

In the desert dromedaries carry jars
of boiling water, pumpkins, erotic verses.
Where, then, is the oasis of the heart?

And where will I be in one hundred years?
Will I lay low in some neglected field,
or return to hear my voice cradled now

in another human body, or else eased
from the throat of a lizard or a horse?
I'll go down the same way I arose, saying:

"Simon's gospel, simply put, is that everything – animate or inanimate – is potentially treasure. Simon tries to see through things, as if they were composed of light rather than matter. And her vision leads the reader into a world rendered luminous, its radiance sharply, almost painfully defined." – Poetry Magazine

Bless the storytellers and their fragile tongues,
bless the bee-keepers, organ grinders, the women
and men who dance with their breasts just touching.

Star-studded night with its circles of rain,
mysterious light, white torch of moonlight –
the city's abandoned, the children looking for maps.