wanting everyone to know
just how great we really are
or denying to ourselves
and to everybody else
that we have the skills and smarts
that could win 10,000 hearts
treating others as beneath
us or even inhuman
being irresponsible
for myself or for the world
worse is not caring at all
being dead before we fall
finally into our graves
death is god’s last enemy
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 2, 2015
The annual report
says I’m alive,
but my most memorable
recent dream
is of a portico
that’s unattached,
that leads nowhere, that needs
to be rebuilt.
The parts no longer fit
together. They
may still look strong and sound,
but lie there in
the dirt and will not move.
The contractors
I hire all do their best,
to no avail.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 26, 2015
(April 17, Michael Hammer
piano)
so many keys played carefully
one at a time or recklessly
in clumps in chords in runs in scales
hands bouncing fingers waggling trills
yet knowing each composer’s need
for a performer’s sloth or speed
for piano or fortissimo
to Hammer or to gently go
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 18, 2015
On Snoring
I wake and my lips are all chapped,
My sinuses completely stopped.
Breath through my nose is what’s missing.
My biggest regret: no kissing.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 15, 2015
Buzzkill
Five in a line in our family
(all of them females, of course),
have the name Bee in the middle
(between their last and their first.)
Half of the bees in our country
died over winter last year.
One out of three of our foodstuffs
need bees or will disappear.
Einstein may not be who said it
(no one has proved it was he),
that we will die, yes, each family
within two years of the bee.
We need more prairies and fruit trees,
(that are not sprayed from above.)
Honey from new hives can happen:
we need to give bees our love.
[written in 9 minutes early this morning after hearing a PechaKucha 20-slides-each-20 seconds talk last night by Urbana, Illinois, beekeeper Maggie Wachter at a Sola Gratia Farm dinner.]
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 12, 2015
Our April morning
sky, ribbed in violet,
now becomes
magenta fading into
dusty blue without
a single white cloud
to distract our horizon gaze
waiting for our spinning
globe to show the sun.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 12, 2015
Her voice is low and very resonant,
but now, with age, I often cannot hear
each word. She rightly takes offense at that
and thinks me inattentive. If my ear
is turned away, or if I do not see
her moving lips, the sounds are often lost.
For other women there is jealousy
since I can hear them fine. It is not lust
for at the string trio tonight, the sound
of violin was clear, cello was round,
but viola was lost in the background…
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL April 8, 2015
When I am mowing grass between
the growing Christmas trees,
I often see the red-winged bird
perched high observing me.
If I turn the loud mower off
I’ll hear his scolding cry
a Konk-la-ree, a Konk-la-ree,
and then away he’ll fly.
Is he critiquing how I mow?:
Hey you there! Watch-that-tree!
No, there’s a female nesting near,
Come-to-me, Come-to-me…
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 6, 2015
To America came the Protestants.
In England they could not live
as they would.
They were despised by ruling residents
and fled to freely worship their own God.
Conservatives want to preserve the past,
forgetting which side they were on…
They now
discriminate against those who resist
and say, “To your beliefs we will not bow.”
Instead of helping people to be free
to live and love as God made them to be,
some so-called Christians change the
Golden Rule:
“Do unto others what hate did to you.”
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, April 4, 2015
The Pastor asks for those in need
of prayer–
she wants their names. She writes that Bill
will go
for surgery next week. And Ann
retire
at last from waitressing–what will
she do?
In prayer, the Pastor lists each name,
each need.
She celebrates our joys, lists our
concerns–
not that the One who hears has to
be made
aware, but we require the
reminders
of what we are to do: care for
the sick,
go visit lonely folks, give food
and clothes.
Then lobby Congress for new laws
that make
the ninety-nine percent receive
from those
who have it made, a chance, at least
a share
of hope from those who never seem
to care.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, March 30, 2015
Views from the Edge 