Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Hearsay

There are stories
that come to us wrapped
in the mist of rivers, rumours
of lost cities, valleys
teeming with gold
birds, or deep in the rain
forest a tribe that can read
the minds of animals.

Is there really a creature
known to us only because we have seen
its long shadow, who swims
without stopping, for hundreds of years,
all the way to the sea, through the sea
and back, its movement remote
controlled by the turning of invisible
seasons?
                 Someone
who ought to know tells me
this river I can see
from my back door meanders
North, away from the cities,
for a thousand miles and empties
into an Ocean that is mostly
ice, where the Earth’s magnetic
field guides the spirits
of water as they rise, weaving
sails of light in the midnight sky.

– George Amabile

Twilight  /  Daylight

Birds collect on the telephone wires
like blots in a child’s drawing
as bronze bells pulse through the valley
dusk, and seem to ignite
pinpoints of pale fire
that drift in clusters and broken chains
toward the darkening paths
between the courthouse and the church.

Thousands of faces, each one
in the light of its own wavering flame,
stare up at the white cage
of the bandstand. There will be
no brassy fanfares tonight, no stars
or stripes, there will only be voices
distorted by amplification, words
we’ve heard before, not often
enough or in the right
places.

             On the other side
of the world, it’s morning. Children
play among rubble, broken
houses, torn up trees. A small girl
stops. At her feet, something
she’s always wanted, a bright
yellow ball. She stoops
and reaches, becomes, briefly, a flower,
a fountain
                 of fire
                           and blood.

It’s true: we’re free, to assemble
openly, to say what we need
to say, but we have no power
to choose what is done in our name.

– George Amabile