Robin

An Elegy [a draft]

Did you attempt to fill an inner hole
By pouring water in another’s well?
Was soothing ev’ry stranger’s sagging soul
A way to lift your own from hopeless Hell?
You were a glass that magnified delight,
A sun that shined upon the spirit’s shore.
Your blazing, blinding brilliance kept from sight
The darkness deep inside your solar core.

When choosing not to live another day,
Perhaps, you—like us—didn’t truly know
That there’d again be clouds of black and gray
Above the spots once brightened by your glow.
But, though extinguished, you remain a star—
Which means some light will reach us from afar.

“Soldiers Put to Death”–an elegy

 

Oh, Army Worm, for years you serve the corps,
You’ll be repaid with poison that they’ll pour.
And Soldier Ant, although you serve the State,
One day they’ll point and say, “Exterminate!”
Insignia you wear on valiant chests
Will not deter those branding you as pests.
An officer will enter and salute
With orders saying only, “Execute.”
And once you’re through with gruesome dying gags,
There’ll be no burial, no folded flags.
Courageous ants and worms, your fate is clear:
You set the date when choosing your career.

As much as I would like to claim some profound meaning for this poem, I must insist that it simply is–as it appears to be–an odd word game combining animal names, pest control-related concepts, and military terms.

–Paul

“Elegy for a Cow”

“An Elegy for a Cow” [An Elizabethan Sonnet by Paul Burgess]

A mockingbird’s demise is sad, no doubt,
But rarely does one raise a single brow—
No, not a man it seems does cry or pout—
When flies begin to feast upon a cow.
No thought is spared the weeping widowed bull
Who never could replace the love she gave,
Who lacks the milk to keep their children full,
Who can’t afford a spade to dig her grave,
Who knows, alas, his cherished, mooing mate
With leather tanners soon will have to meet—
Because it’s destiny, says the Book of Fate,
To be some guy or gal’s reclining seat—
Whose beefy bovine tears inscribe in soil
These lines produced by bullish sweat and toil.