7 Poems by Nolo Segundo
In Mourning for a Tree
I heard the ungodly racket
of the chain saws, those
cruel barbaric weapons
‘gainst somnolent nature,
and I thought, Could it be
that tree? The old oak
which had stood like a
seventy foot high king
for God knows how long
in my neighbors’ yard.
I could see for some time
it was dying, with a paucity
of leaves the last few years
but trees can take a long time
to die—and so I told myself,
he’ll make it another year….
And perhaps he would have
but my neighbors must have
tired of the near leafless tree
and so called in the butchers.
But when I left my house and
walked past their yard now
sawdust strewn, and saw the
empty sky where the oak had
once held court...I mourned.
Ode to a Sparrow
I watch you daily
as you sing your plaintive song
and perch lightly upon your loss—
I wish I could help you,
little sparrow so light, but
my own wings were clipped
long before I even left the egg
and daily I must learn to fly…
SNOWFALL
I sit at the table,
breakfast just done,
a few moments before
going out into the world
by way of the cyber genie
[whoever thought we would
work from home as our ancestors
did for thousands of isolated years?]
I look out the big bay window as
the snowflakes glide gracefully
from heaven’s only seen face
earthward, each snowflake
pirouetting as in joy as
it falls quietly, gently
onto an ocean of
whiteness cold
and pure but
not eternal….
Why I wonder is a
snowfall so sweet,
so sad, when rain
is always prosaic,
sleet harsh, gales
so fierce—but I
suppose the real
question is, why
we love it so….
Ode to My Red Maple
She lives just outside
my bedroom window,
ever loyal, ever faithful—
always in the same spot,
day after day,
season after season—
she’s there to give
comfort, even joy,
especially in November,
the sloughing month
when the leaves fall
in sad splendor, with
grace—but my tree,
my Japanese Maple,
holds out, turns scarlet
with the blood of life,
its leaves dancing
little dances of love
in the autumnal winds
as though it were
laughing at death….
Climbing the Long Hills
The first one was childhood,
a long, slow climb as time
moved ever so slowly then—
but you could fit the world
in your pocket and family
wrapped you in its cocoon.
The next hill was a scary hill,
up or down, you’re never
sure, and time moves much
faster, too fast for the child
still left over, its toys now
all broken, scattered about.
The grown-up hill is part
work, part fun to climb
but take the wrong turn,
and you fall, fall hard—
unlike the make-believe
of childhood, you die….
Of ETHER and EARTH
Of ether and earth we are made,
not fully one or the other, and
so we always feel untethered,
ever restless, prone at times
to coming apart…
whole nations come apart,
what chance then have you
or I?
Our souls seek the air,
our bodies cling to earth.
We are never one or the
other, we are never at rest.
Some wait for death,
some wait for God….
You Are
After John Clare’s ‘I Am’
You are, and not as feared…
Just a birthing and a dying,
Nothing before, nothing after.
No, that is your body (and brain)
—but you are forever,
Without begin, without end,
A soul stepping briefly
Out of eternity into a fragile
Shell alone and lost
In a world of life and death,
Sunrise and sunset, desire and
Regret. Yet you forget what you
Truly are: the very breath of God.
And so you blunder through this
Dream-speckled life like an
Orphaned child hungering for home.