Two Poems

 

  by David Appelbaum

 

 

 

 

 

Braille

 

 

Reading a book the man

says reading a book

the words

like a fishbone

choke on life

a gasp meaning

the book falls open

the man says the book

a slip of paper

catches the wind

sails the open sky

the man says

until

he taps a white cane

on the way

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alphabet

 

 

With the crane’s flight

ages flew past also

the babble of the crib

the child’s zeal

then the frown

of unfounded words

then the man

in the desert of thought

alone before temptation

bent, yielding

O why do ideas

soar so grandly

with that spoon-billed

long-necked silhouette

flapping molecular north?

Why does passion

lift so thin?

This zeal to

a lone man

emerges from a cistern’s

mouth one day

into blaring sun

& their majestic brace

in which all the letters

of all the words

ever to be writ

ever to be writ

are

 

 

 

 

David Appelbaum is a hiker and biker, former editor of Parabola Magazine, and the publisher of Codhill Press.  His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Commonweal and Rhino.