My Friend Moses: A Poem

Moses

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I have one friend
Moses
water beads on his black boots
with silken mud from parting the puddle
it makes him pause, sucking on his cigarette
like a nipple

these puddles gathered last Thanksgiving
languishing brown in gravel
beds
and gazing at puddle-hopping dead leaves
on the hazy dance floor
but, Moses said, the barn wasn't red and that newly weaned
calf nodding an emphatic yes against the door
was just a restless dream
in bulls balls

Moses sometimes wonders what water
molecules say at reunions of annual
strangers after they parachute tumbling
from thick black clouds into soiled
bath tubs
I tell him its the usual gripe of Mormon
wives railing against oxygen
and he stubs his toe in the slick
dirt
like he knows ten commandments
left something out

but rain puddles don't speak to me
much
so I let Moses' cigarette
float its hissing death
while black boots stir the fine silt
to curl like smoke around the swollen butt

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Notes

I wrote "Moses" for a poetry class at a satellite campus of Indiana University back in the late '90s.

It doesn't seem like I wrote it though. I mean, I have intimate knowledge, intimate memories, of the guy who wrote this, but he is no longer me.

I don't think I would return to that point of my journey, that particular state of my form, if given the chance. But there is something in my old work, some quality of the creative spark, that I wonder if I've lost.

Perhaps so. Maybe that 'quality' is just youth, and it is both inevitable and perfectly natural to lose it.

Probably some other quality has grown in its place.

Image from Pixabay, by distelAPPArath.

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Blockchain Poets

How delightful to discover an active poetry community on Hive!

I've seen many attempts at creating a poetry community since I joined the blockchain in 2018; most never seem to get off the ground. Blockchain Poets, though small, has the feel of a thriving community, a real place where poets can meet and share their work.

If you're a poet, it's definitely worth checking out. I almost hate to advertise it, though: at the moment it is just small enough to feel like a writing group.

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