Sample Poems by Steven Schroeder
63rd Street
Garbage on concertina wire
could be prayer flags. Spirit
carried it there and left it
waving in the line of perfect circles
on the ridge of a pawn shop
next to the el tracks. It is not
a sacred mountain, but wind stirs.
Sakyamuni has good ears.
There are bodhisattvas everywhere.
Gravity
They’ll try to tell you gravity
keeps your feet on the ground,
but it’s the weight of mountains
clasping you to earth,
transposed here into air
so heavy it reminds you
that you lift the world
with every step.
An Unswept Deck
A dense forest of seedlings no
more than a quarter of an inch tall
has sprouted in the thin layer of soil
that remains where leaves have rotted
all Summer on an unswept wooden deck.
They put down roots insanely confident
in the ground beneath their feet, know
in their hearts that they will
reach the sun, that there will always
be rain when they need it, no
Winter, only this eternal Spring.
Cottonwoods
grown brittle after years
in this weather carry scars
from Spring storms. They are
as impatient of Winter
as their human neighbors
and think a broken limb here
and there a small price to pay for
a thaw and the promise of summer.
Testify
Snowdrops can’t wait
for Spring, and crowds
of them arrive in early March
with such conviction that
it is tempting to believe them
when they swear that Winter
is over. By the time blue
Siberian squill join these
pale little mobs of true
believers, even the coldest
passerby is moved to see crocus
color everywhere and testify
that April blizzards were never
more than distant memories.
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