At full moons you can walk into what might have been
printed through the silk screens of fallen leaves,
and ticking to the valley’s rhythm-twilight chimes—
you’ll almost hear them if the wind is right.
Stephen A. Rozwenc, an American expat poet who resides in Thailand, shares his poetry
Stephen A. Rozwenc is an American expat poet who resides in Thailand. He has published 6 collections of poetry. Four of his books are currently available on Amazon Books. In the last 12 years alone more than 300 of his poems have appeared in print journals and online venues in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. 20 of his haiku poems will shortly appear in a bilingual anthology published in China. This anthology will be distributed in 16 Asian countries. He has also published a collection of translations of famous Russian poets in collaboration with Victor Peppard, a Russian language, literature, and culture professor from the University of South Florida.
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
At full moons you can walk into what might have been
printed through the silk screens of fallen leaves,
and ticking to the valley’s rhythm-twilight chimes—
you’ll almost hear them if the wind is right.
Past streetlight maples and elephant fire hydrants,
Every bobbing bobolink meadow and then,
in the soft genes of the powdery moonlight,
there’s a wood frame house fermenting sweet ideas
in the yeast of grunting, changing seasons.
And you could shudder like twigs just pried and bent
if you think it’s a feeling you should have kept,
but left in a rush to move on to bigger schemes.
By the side of that pebbly country road,
on this sleepy Sunday afternoon
with your three stumbling moon children,
pick up litter, tell them it’s twinkling bones
once upon a time mixed from milk and starlight.
Make up a dream the litter is tickets
to ten thousand times the speed of light
And you’ve bags of them to divorce time,
go back, and without interference
finally do your life right.
And passersby will think they see through such childishness,
but you know you can break the insipid
chronological orders of the stars: get born,
go to school, grow up, make money and die bored.
Light years ago or ahead, four on one ticket,
you and the straying children appear aloud
in a cobblestone square and stare transfixed.
Leaved skyscrapers on all sides are lost mountains
catacombed with groaning ovaries.
The square rocks with tree-people swaying
and singing black and white magic arrays.
Preconscious moons glance across the horizon.
In the center in a danced double-helix–
A tree-man and his daughter-cells
leap and swirl and decode genetic lies, spraying
streams of seedlings landing in rows like chromosomes.
The seedlings have sprouted tiny faces
that manufacture oxygen
and carbon dioxide for interbreathing.
As the crowd guides the seedlings to the rockets
It chants an ancient chant to them.
“Maple, my apple,
Je m’appelle,
Je m’appelle,
like the lost quarter
of someone’s past
toeing a lily,
you’ll be free
to seek your destiny.”
_______________
