Poems by Daniel Thomas Moran
On The Queen Elizabeth-May 2015
for Stewart and Elizabeth Wilson
From her stout prow
that bisects this headwind,
The sky is a cathedral.
The sea belies direction.
Here and again, the gray
has tipped open a blue window.
The place where my heart resides
holds a book on her palms.
I am thoroughly vanished
in the words of a man
named Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.
His words are seabirds that
soar and dance the wind.
They humble me, just as
the sea humbles me, within
the sky’s endless deep.
And then is the lesson,
floating within the joys
of an exquisite emptiness.
How small is one man,
even a man in love.
Rockets
I am in my seat,
looking through the
reaching arms of giants,
that stand down along
the river’s bank.
The sky is even
more blue, when set
behind the green
canopies of late July.
The news is insistent,
against a distant echo
of rumbling sound.
The breeze has animated.
The rushing waters have
gathered yesterday’s rain.
The clouds seem alive.
But the news is insistent.
The suffering echoes
off of these hillsides.
The images are of
screams and mourning,
rubble and lifeless bodies.
Why must we give in
to killing?
Why must all the heroes
be armed?
Why must all our beliefs
be carried on the
backs of rockets?
A Basket of Cobra
The snake charmer
squatting in Delhi,
had the whole magillah.
The flute, the basket and
of course the cobra,
all flared and erect.
His intent was only
to charm me, to coax
some of the rupees
out of my back pocket.
He wanted to drape that
snake around my neck.
I am not usually so
cozy with cobras.
But he assured me,
as the cobra kissed
his brown cheek,
the cobra had no poison.
I was less afraid of
the cobra than the fact
that I tend to trust everyone.
Unable to resist the photo,
I took hold of the snake, and
Held it up for my wife and
all the friends back home.
The good news is that,
I am back in America,
able to tell the story.
The sad news is that,
I will never know,
If the snake charmer
was telling me the truth
about the snake.
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Daniel Thomas Moran, born in New York City in 1957, is the author of seven collections of poetry. His seventh collection, A Shed for Wood, was published by Salmon Poetry in Ireland in 2013. His prior collection, Looking for the Uncertain Past, was published by Poetry Salzburg at the University of Salzburg in 2006. He earned a B.S. in Biology from Stony Brook University (1979) and a Doctorate in Dental Surgery from Howard University (1983). In 2005, he was appointed Poet Laureate by The Legislature of Suffolk County, New York. His collected papers are being archived by The Department of Special Collections at Stony Brook University. He is a retired Clinical Assistant Professor at Boston University's School of Dental Medicine, where he delivered the Commencement Address in 2011 and received the ADSA Outstanding Faculty Award. He and his wife Karen live in Webster, New Hampshire. |
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