Monday, April 07, 2008

Poem of the Day - April 6

Today's poem is by Sue Walker, the Poet Laureate of Alabama and Chair of the English Department at the University of South Alabama. It is in honor of her birthday.

Binary Measure
by Sue Walker

How it was only one measure
but yet held two beats,
separate and apart,
was mystery
and music,
was longing,
and memory that hung in the night,
the slack face of a haunted moon.

If her name was Mick
or Carson, if the letters
were confused about making
nouns and verbs, if the sentences
were hard and calloused,
discord that rose up angry,
and a trombone took over
and denied the flute,
and bãy boong bãy boong came
out of the night like flashes
of lightening, if a storm
played across Georgia,
moved west, moved into Alabama,
without definition, the heart,
its four chambers wanting,
became rite of passage,
became need,
became the struggle to love.

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