Two Poems
Janet Kenny
Losses
It’s the little things that go
when military blasts
destroy the best we know,
and don’t. Iconoclasts
of values, who despise
the sacred and the small.
Who judge a book by size
and weight, or not at all.
Lost plants and butterflies,
old instruments and toys,
and tiny paintings, burned
with those who loved them, blown
to god knows where? Returned
to where their truth was grown,
along with ants and flowers.
A memory of sound,
and music that had powers
to spread its peace around.
Who are these men who make
the weapons that destroy,
and never give, but take
our faith, our lives, our joy?
- - -
Crows
The crows are chasing through the sky
and laughing, laughing fit to burst.
Just watch them show us how to fly,
apart, together, now dispersed
in circles, swooping, calling names
and pairing in fantastic games.
The mating season now is past
and youth is in the air at last.
See, see, up high then far away,
then back again to join the play.
Around again, now up, now down,
and life’s an adjective and noun.
- - -
Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993. Her poems have been published in many printed and online journals. She has published two collections of poems: This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press) and Whistling in the Dark (Kelsay Books). Her work is in several anthologies including Outer Space: 100 Poems, edited by Midge Goldberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This last particularly delights her because she is number 79 in the list of 100 poets who in recorded time have written in some way about space, including Homer, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Shelley, Pushkin, Housman, Yeats, Lorca, Wilbur, Stallings and Simic. She is very sorry she can’t tell her late husband. He would have laughed.
- - -
Hop to…
David | Ethan | Gail | Janice | John | Mark | Melissa | Mike | Paul | Steven | Susan | Word-Bird