Four Superb Poems by John Guzlowski

 

A BROKEN SONNET ABOUT BREATHING

 

Everywhere my breathing

becomes your breathing

and your breathing

becomes my breathing

 

and when my breathing stops

yours continues

and becomes

someone else's breathing

 

and their breathing becomes

your breathing

and my breathing

 

even though my breathing

is gone and still 

 

 

IN THE MORNING I IMAGINE I’M A TREE

 

I wake and see squirrels

rutting around my roots.

A deer stands nearby ignoring me.

 

Last night I dreamt of miracles,

oceans growing at my base,

the sky settling in my hair. 

None of that happened. 

 

Instead I feel the cold on my face,

the stiffness in my fingers. 

I don't think I'll write anymore today.

 

Thoreau thought there was magic here,

magic in the stillness of standing

in the forest, and maybe he was right,

but he lived only long enough

to see nothing but his dreams. 

 

 

EVERY POET

 

Every poet thinks

he hears the voice of God

rising from his palms

like sleep

 

But I’ve heard the dead

and so have you

 

They’re gone

Someplace

and left us here

 

We look around

And listen

Pretend the wind

Is their voice

 

But the wind

Only says one thing

 

Hush 

 

 

What the Dead Teach Us

 

Some have to die, give up,

allow their bodies at last

to tumble to the ground,

and die

 

So that you and me,

struggling by, can think,

can say, I’m not dead,

I won’t give up

 

God will stumble and fall

before I die.

John Guzlowski’s poetry appears in Rattle, North American Review, Garrison Keillor’s Writers’ Almanac, The Ontario Review, Atticus Review, Manhattan Review, and other print and online journals. His most recent books of poetry are: Echoes of Tattered Tongues (winner of the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Award), True Confessions, and Mad Monk Ikkyu. He is also the author of the Hank and Marvin mystery novels.

Czeslaw Milosz in a review of one of my books about my parents and their experiences in WWII, said my writing “astonished” him and that I had “an enormous ability for grasping reality.”