FACING WEST

FACING WEST

Wild persimmons, red cardinals...
Heart aches for the beauty of the place
To stay and stir among the wintering roots
Tufting through to spring. To Spring? Oh.
The heart caves and whispers
Not, in such deep silence.
Eye watches autumn
Surely sifting summer seeding
For winter's cold keeping
And spring ever calling.
Already I long for spring...
Or fear white winter's dying...
What dies in winter?
Only the summer's dreaming.

--Barbara Smith Stoff

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

O HENRY'S LAST LEAF

In this classroom,
I wish to compete!
I wish to compete
with whatever
is going on out there!
Last night
in color
and in black and white,
you watched
and you listened
as television reassembled
beatings and rapes and...
and murders.

This morning
I want to read to you
a simple story. O Henry,
teach us to listen
O! teach us to hear
this small quiet voice.

In this room
there are no guns
there are no cries
of pain and horror
to snare your attention...
only this small quiet voice
that says, look,
there is this much good
...in one old man
who is drunk...
most of the time,
so the teacher said,
(one last leaf for O Henry)
and I believe...
the students...
listened.


--Barbara Smith Stoff

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

BLACK HOLE (space in time?)

Hard words from retreating faces
are cold fingers groping
spreading chill covering
over warm and pulsing life
unveiling self as monad,
an ultimate lonely unit
cooling and cooling into cold compression
falling toward frozen death below degree:
Dante's deepest center emits no light.

Energy is stilled
in cold pressure condensing
past the point of transformation,
isolation bursts from its own intensity
and cold becomes heat expanding
radial reaching, starburst giving
full circle reconciliation...
polar arcs in myriad hue.
Clear-eyed faces, behold!
Such transfiguration.

--Barbara Smith Stoff