Five Poems by Duane Vorhees

 

BRAHMA AND SHIVA ARE THE SAME

Creation and destruction share a pulse.

Given the infinities of time and space,

everything takes turns as everything else.

Trees become jewels at a diamond's pace.

The birds used to be dinosaurs;

mountains, plains; and deserts, flowers.

The Eves were made of galaxy atoms

after doing their stint as orchids,

and constellations became Adams,

and apples once were arachnids.

 

GONDWANALAND

 

This weak hiker

defeated by heat and the hills

wonders:

 

Could any cartographer

have encompassed your entire,

the diptych topography

of your shrouds and celebrations?

--any climatologist

comprehended your sunshine

and your thunders?

--or philosopher

have devised some system

that would have resolved

your paradox?

 

Then, how could I,

your own layman with skin in the game,

have ever

composed your spread sheet?

 

A MARRIAGE

 

The names on the jerseys

are the same as last season

but the players inside

have changed.

 

SHIFTING

 

Behold the red and the black smiths,

masters of the bold House of Ink,

as un-calloused fists lose their grip,

undone by the arts of the pink.

 

CROCK

 

in a minute second

in the second minute

of the year--

 

I did not notice

that the gods

of my ears, my eyes,

my hands, my mind

took their sudden leave.

 

I could see

no scythe, no Valkyrie,

no blue myriad-eyed ram,

no acrobats or clowns

to remind me

how experience

is so fleeting.

 

The air merely escaped

from a closed jar

to a larger atmosphere.

Duane Vorhees lives in Thailand after teaching in Japan and Korea for many years. He was raised in Ohio and received his PhD in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University. Hog Press of Ames, iowa, recently published tree collections of his poetry, THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, and HEAVEN.