Selected Poems 2006 - 2020
by John Xavier
Free ebook download: Selected Poems 2006 - 2020 by John Xavier, legally licensed and available in PDF format.
A free poetry collection containing 181 pages of the best poems from multiple published books by the author. This is a free pdf download from Obooko.
A collection of the best poems from multiple published books. 181 pages.
From the book:
A LEAP
Deep in night the lake has leveled itself
to swallow all the heavens
in one silent meditation –
a mirror perfected in its darkness
and divorced from the rolling forested hills
that undulate away
towards the cowering horizon
It lends its eternity to the moon and the stars,
reminding them of their nocturnal dominion
lost long ago when they became
a mere ossuary for the gods
In this moment it is almost as if time is retreating
so that the lake can once more reclaim
itself as an unborn child –
that is, until a shadow erupts out of the
middle of its watery face like an unbound fantasy
As the shadow twists in the air it too catches some light,
revealing its silver skin, streaked
with gossamer cataracts
fleeing in all directions
Lingering, the fish bends like a bow
before falling, and disappears
ACTING COOL
Everyone is just as cool as me
I can't out cool them
I walk past them in silence
They walk past me in silence
I don't say hello
They don't say hello
We don't make eye contact
We don't even try
We're too cool to want anything
We're cool as soon as we step outside
We're cool even when we wish we weren't
Who's going to break the ice first?
Not me
Not them
ALL THAT REMAINS
Fog oozes around the bones
Heaped over centuries;
It touches the blackened scraps of leather
Overgrown with fungus,
It crawls across the shattered antlers
And hooves of deer
Here too are the mussel shells
And worn pebble tools that opened them,
Fragments of the mystery
Where creeping snails linger warily
With tentative eye stalks
The midden is as tall as a man;
Spilling out to the edges of the forest,
A gathering of abandoned
Relics that say more than the speechless gods
Once worshiped in this country,
Powers called to by generations of people
Watching over the land and sea;
They say more
But still not enough
Each one of their villages is gone,
Less now than the last smoke of dead fires
Where primal myths were born;
Passions long ago faded into the air
This is all they found,
These starved children of another continent;
With rifles raised in fear
They patrolled the unholy site,
Saying their prayers
In unusual honesty and alarm while
Wondering at the profound immensity of it,
That such a thing could ever exist
Even in a haunted world
In the captain’s journal entry that evening
No mention of it was made
