May 5, 2023

CORAGYPS ATRATUS

They sit on the barren tree staring at what we cannot fathom. They are strangely beautiful creatures and utterly odd looking as well. Their black plumage is entrancing, more so when put on display by extended wings. But inevitably it is their head and neck that draws the eye. Gray against the ebony of their bodies, and wrinkled as if wearing a chain mail balaclava. We can only imagine how strange we must look to them. And with the mutual nod we retreat to the house as they lift into the waiting sky.

April 20, 2023

AT PRESENT

Somewhere in the world
at this very moment,
something remarkable
is being laid to ruin.
It is our nature to tear down
what we cannot understand,
what we hold different,
what does not comport
with our present view
of how things ought to be.
Somewhere in the world
at this very moment
something remarkable
is being born,
is being created,
is arising
out of an idea,
a thought, an emotion.
We are all
somewhere in the world
at this very moment.

First apeared in Peacock Journal, February 2017
https://peacockjournal.com/louis-faber-three-poems/

April 13, 2023

COLOURS

We hunted him as a stag
across his fields, trophy
we called him red man,
color of Ares, gods
sacrificed on our altar,
his rivers run with his spirit.
I am white
bereft of color,
barren, a glare
a desert stripped of life.
It is I who wear
Cain’s mark, plucked
from the garden
the sweet taste fades
my lips are dry.
You are black
an amalgam, green
of the grasses in summer field,
orange of sun
singeing an ocean
surf ablaze, blue
of a crystal sky
purple of robes
of Nubian kings,
brown of the soil
fertile and yielding.

First appeared in IHRAF Publishes Literary Magazine, Issue 1, 2019
https://anoldwriter.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/8d041-ihrafpublishes2019.pdf

March 25, 2023

CONCEIVE OF THIS

No child, no youth
wants to imagine the moment
of his or her conception.
Now, that is the moment of personhood
in some places, a moment when
two cells become one and is
a life of its own, but it isn’t
the convergence of sperm and ovum
we avoid, but the act leading to it.
When you are an adoptee
and only later in life discover
your now dead birthparents
that moment, that scene
is a small void in your life
among larger voids you want to,
but cannot ever, seem to fill,
so it is left to your imagination
of time, place, circumstances
and ultimately action, but you ensure
that scene ends moments before conception.

March 22, 2023

STATUS OF LIBERTY

Do us a favor
hold back
on your tired, your poor.
We’re no longer real hot
on those yearning to be free.
We left it on the plaque
but no one’s supposed
to read them anyway.
Take the hint,
we closed the Island,
made it a museum
that ought
to tell you something.
Emma’s dead, get it,
and Lazarus, well
just read your Bible.
We closed the sweatshops
and shipped out
all those menial jobs
to Mexico and the Far East
so you’re of little good
to us now.

So stay home
at least until you’re fluent
and can speak at least
one Scandinavian language.

First appeared in 45 Poems of Protest,Eleventh Transmission, 2019
https://waxpoetryart.com/eleventh/2019/faber.html

December 4, 2022

ASKING

Asking saints to intercede
is something quite new to me,
having never considered that saints
were people whom I might seek out.

I’ve started carefully, only
seeking saints who hang
on my family tree, Margaret,
Itta, Begga, Adela, Arnulf,

and I’ve vowed to ask nothing
for myself, for karma will
see to me one way or another,
so I ask only for those in need.

I don’t know if the saints
will respond, or how I would
know if they did, but my wife says
that prayer never hurts,

and I cannot argue with that.

November 3, 2022

LEILA

At the left click of the mouse
my granddaughter appears
barely a week old
and with a right-click
she is frozen into the hard drive.
I remember sitting outside
the Buddha Hall of Todai-Ji Temple
in the mid-morning August sun the
smiling at a baby waiting in her stroller
for her mother to bow
to the giant golden Buddha.
I recall the soft touch
of the young monk on my shoulder,
his gentle smile, and
in halting English, his saying
“all babies have the face
of the old man Buddha.”
In the photos, the smile
of my son is the smile
on the face of Thay,
the suppressed giggle that always
lies below the surface of
the face of Tenzin Gyatso.
There is much I want to ask her,
my little Leila, there is much
she could offer, but I know
that like all Buddhas
she will respond with a smiling
silence and set me back on my path.