POST WAR BABY
by Timothy Dyson
POST WAR BABY
I never knew my birth mother
yet, she gave me more than life
On a small velvet turntable
six babies put out for choosing
The young post-war couples
came at appointed times
From Captain Kangaroo
on to the Three Stooges
Mighty Mouse saved the day
and Topcat pranced away
Bunny Rabbit stole carrots
who knew what Greenjeans did
And Prince Valiant stood tall
on the pre-teen ledge
Come back, Shane
bring an extra horse for JFK
Help us, Davy Crockett
in this wilderness of signals
Splattered into consciousness
like sock-hoppers collapsed
On a broken carousel
I saw the brave new worlds
burst one night on Mission Beach
Drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon
with a girl named Connie
Her mother’d gone nuts
after raising seven kids with
Her drunk husband who drove
a Sealtest ice cream truck
After the pychedelics came
that pale face of Dylan Thomas
So too with good old Rimbaud
and Yeats’ wild swans
Went gliding down Elizabeth River
towards the unharboring sea
The search began at that moment
where was the joy forever
Though I can’t explain it
the answer was in simple acceptance
In dried petals of Japanese
lillies pressed in first communions
Beneath a-bomb moonbeams
our fortune foretold
When the medium became
the message of exploding Apollo
Rockets aimed at one infinity
at some cosmos of no importance
That must be conquered
and the pictures beamed back
shone with interstellar
clarity and foolish assignation
The naming of the heavens
the collections of dust
DEAR LEADER
And though his country had no need of kings
He descended the golden stair
Within the steel palace framed in self-
Enhancing gazes of glass
And but two steps behind came
The third queen of Slovenia
A new Helen on the parapets of improbability
Were these the false gods of prophecy
Or just the flesh anomalies
Wandering the wasteland of just desserts
THE BEAUTY OF MYSTERY
In a northern prefecture
beneath the holy mountain
the Jizo statues smile down
on the descendants
The older woman
who dwells in both worlds
speaks to the living
for the dead
They call this place
land of the broken lines
where death and dreamers
converse so freely
The eighty eights
five small, elderly widows
come each year
to be near the bones
And, always in Spring,
the perfume of rebirth
greets them here
with a ghostly kiss
About the Author:
Retired from corp HR and took up the life of a poet/fisherman. Many poems published in a variety of publications. Married to my beautiful spouse for thirty five years and life is good.
