Monday, April 16, 2012

Water World

                                                  Brenda Bryant


POETIC BLOOMINGS
http://poeticbloomings.com/


WATER WORLD

We creatures of the air
View the creatures of the sea.
I am gazing in at them
And they're gazing out at me.
Maybe fish are clever;
They get us to devise
Aquarium arrangements
Suited to fishy eyes.
Maybe they're in there saying 
'Look at that skinny one!'
Or 'I find viewing humans
The most enormous fun.'
'I must say the male of the species
Looks odd without much hair!'
Or 'It must be most peculiar,
Breathing all that air!'
We have to pay to see them;
But they see us 'for free';
Which is the most intelligent........?
The creatures of the sea.
*
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MISTY MEMORY


And that is how I remember them, the people from my past;
I expected crisp, bright images that would last and last and last.
There's Grandpa. I really adored him, but except for a photograph
I truly remember just curly hair, a round face and a belly-laugh.
There's Jo, a great friend of my youth, I expected to have recall,
But I just remember her on a bus..... that's absolutely all.
My children as babies? Surely I'd remember each smile and tear!
But no! They're just a vague chubbiness from a very distant year.
How we rely on photographs! Without them we'd be lost,
They'd be like flowers of summertime killed by a winter frost.
In the days before technology, in the days before the 'click',
And even before the first artists learned the portrait trick,
How the bereaved must have wrestled with this absence of recall!
They'd be looking for a memory and finding nothing at all.
*

2 comments:

Bubba said...

I've often wondered how animals in captivity regard the people who parade past their enclosures - you've given them voice!

Thanks for playing M.M.P.P. once again, Brenda! It's nice to have people such as yourself joining in week after week.

Kathe W. said...

I enjoy your take on Eric's "sea shot" and the poem about memories-so right about the value of photos to jog our dusty memories....