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The
Poetry of Harry Furness
Touch
You let me hold your finger in my hand
when I was new
Crystal clear water
I took my first steps as you steadied me
Sparkling flecks drawing in the sunshine
In both body and spirit
Flowing over smooth stones
Singing that low song of itself
We walked hand-in-hand as I held up my arm
And you held on to my wrist
As something buzzed by singing its mating song
Carrying its ancestors within
I felt your strength and followed your lead
A young fish quick surfaces to feed
And misses this time
The entire universe was large and tall
Strong, rough-hewed palms
Powerful fingers that understood hard labor
Holding on to building tools, wood, and wire
I could feel your palm on my back as you steadied me
Trying to pedal a bike
A simple "yes" is what you said as I sped away
We laugh at a leaf escaping down the stream
You pat my shoulder as I set on the bench
With my head down from defeat
You chucked my chin and told me of tomorrow
I rarely saw that kind look that flashed in your pale eyes
Your words were usually as hard as your hands
We went nose-to-nose too many times
I walked another path that you did not understand
Mine was sand, yours concrete
It took years for us to touch hands again
But my right hand in your right hand
Shook years away like shaking the dust from a rag
Words were not our medium
However your touch goes to my soul
Thank you
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Beyond
Physics and Reason
Over, Above, Transcendent, Uber, Farther,
Further...
Calculations, Mathematics, Logic, Scientific Methods, Observations...
Language, Words, Signs, Symbols...
Tao, Zen, Animus, Gia...
Cave drawings to advanced Magester Ludi parallels
Bombarded by neutrinos, soul singing visions
Pictures capturing spirits
Reaching into undefined, unexplainable regions of essence and
existence
John Locke, Jonathan Swift confining language into perfect Latin-like
forms
Ludwig boiling down to truth tables, computers 0 or 1; on or
off
Do not capture enough infinite finalities
Synaptic reaches force us to see between the air molecules
Scribblings on paper, no matter the symbols, will not explain
Our visions of the stars or words the have not yet been
A breeze whispers dreams in my ears
I see what is not religion, not mathematics, not language
Could be described as into the eye of God
But it's not
I've seen between moments and between the particles of air
The beauty of a second is worth the millennium of sorrow
Purple, violet, red, scarlet, rose, yellow, sunburst, sage...
Granularity of shades between the descriptors,
Life of the planet recorded in layers of shale and sandstone
Single cells and proteins springing to creatures that try and
define
The heavens
We are from there was
To will be if we let it
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Stephen
Hawking Dances
Sitting on the cusp of my extinction
I'm perched on the cliffs of my uninhabited isle
Throwing bottles into the sea
Some are corked, some are not, some contain messages, others
not
No two messages are the same, I think linearly
Because of the undertow, the rocks below are littered with glass
And some wet paper
And the beach down the way
Is covered with returns
I've been taking my living out of bottles again and I have plenty
I had over-understood your kindnesses
So all of the messages are about or to you
I have lived in exile too long and have only heard the
The rushing of the wind or only my heartbeat in my ears
Orange turning to red, cooling to green and then blue
I dare not close my eyes and watch what is on the inside
Projected onto my lids
At night I stare up into the stars as they dance around
I saw Stephen Hawking dance once
And the music that he stepped to was
"Nothing produces nothing, it produces something"
He proved, mathematically, what we've all known all along
There is nothing
Black holes don't suck in all of time and space and
Turn them into nothing
They emit Hawking radiation
And begin the dance again
There is no end, just different states of being
So nice that equations are made to sing so eloquently
Like stars we're all slamming into one another at the speed of
light
Or traveling away from one another
Deeper and deeper into dark mattered space
Degrading as time takes its toll
I need to slam into other bodies and emit positive energy
Not just to sit and stare into space and drink and fart
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And
More Rain Comes Down
We've stopped watching the news
All they say is that more rain is coming
But I knew because of the heavy winter snows
And if the rains came all at once
We'd see the river roar outside its banks
The river is running fast and angry
Swallowing all of our fields and streets
Taking back what we had stolen
My great-great grandfather had escaped the trail of tears
And became European to settle this land
But he secretly kept the spirit of the people
And it's been handed down to me as I have
Passed it along to my sons and daughters
Spring planting will be late this year
The river doesn't bring riches to our fields anymore
Just mud that hardens like cement in the sun
We spent last night sandbagging the river bank
And I heard someone's dog go by yelping at the dark
I moved as much as I could upstairs
Our second floor is groaning over the amount of stuff
That we have
And hope to keep
The wife is worn with worry
Over more than her great-grandmother's porcelain
But we're the lucky ones
Charlie's house was taken
It sat on a bluff that the river ate away and then
His house fell into the muddy waters
The state guard would have been here to help
But no one is left here in our state
They're all over there, fighting
Just another administration killing others on a path of tears
I'm tired and this is the last flood that I'll battle
What's left will be left - time to move to higher ground
Copyright Harry Furness
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