A Poem for Air Conditioning

I luxuriate 

in the frigid morning

under warm covers and 

blissful remnants of fading dreams.

No future

No past

Just this glorious moment:

The simple love I felt 

As a child

Returns:

A mother's care

A father's safety

A brother's company:

"I am a flower blooming in the desert--a ray of light in the wasteland."

The sheet rubs against my shins, confining

yet setting me free;

There is nothing else.

***

A memory of absent paradise:

In summer, my family slept downstairs.

We could afford only one air conditioner. It perched 

in the window of our living room, 

transfiguring downstairs into heaven

while the bedrooms above baked and suffocated.

Mother and father took the couches

Under cathedral windows

While we dragged our tiny, plastic

mattresses from upstairs and sprawled out

under the soft rumble 

that emerged from round vents, 

like engines of a starship

conveying us to a new world.

I had no fear of the dark.

A Poem for Hope

I don't write poetry very often, but sometimes I do. I wrote the following a few years ago. With the recent passing of my dear aunt, it seems somehow appropriate to share.

Hope

Your world is different from mine:

Run by ceaseless watchdogs

Who use guns and sticks

To protect trembling sheep

From unrelenting wolves.

If I am sheep, as you say,

Then I am in good stead

With lambs who sought wolves

To fill the wolves’ hearts with love:

Jesus, Martin, Mahatma.

But I don’t think of myself

As a lamb, nor as a lion

Roaring alone in the wild,

Nor as any animal of the earth,

For no body may contain me.

I am the wind: free and fleeting,

Intangible yet felt,

Unseen yet strong;

Wild with the breath of God,

I move, I warm, I inspire.

I am the evening caress

Through a young woman’s hair;

I fill the nostrils of the old man

With promise for a new day.

I drift where I am needed:

I rise on currents

And sink into ebbs

To stroke the ear of a young child,

Fraught with fear. I whisper, “It’s okay.

Go out and play!”

She listens if she wishes;

She ignores me if she must.

But she sees her future

(Or one telling glimpse)

Whether she knows it or not.

 © 2008-2015, Greg Gildersleeve