Three Poems by J. B. Hogan

 

 

Warmth of Myth

 

I leaned against the warmth of myth

but history and reason cooled me down,

led me away from ancient tales

recited in ancient huts and barren fields.

Myths, pleasing and consoling,

heated the walls of my icy soul

gave aid and comfort to

my low beating heart,

old stories drifting through time

over time, twisted, listing

toward a false fire stoked

to distorted heights by

ascetics, diviners, heretics and

modern grifters.

 

What Is It That We Fear?

 

What is it that we fear?

What is it makes us so quarrelsome, so ready to harm and kill?

Is it that blackness on the other side –

the quiet, the nothingness, the non-existence?

Knowing that there will be no more sunrises,

no more love and affection

no more work to do

no more goals to reach

that the world will go on

without us, without us.

And is there nothing at all,

the gods we made up not there

no heaven, no hell, no thing?

Is all this why we are so quarrelsome,

so ready to harm and kill?

Born from nothing, out of the dark,

to this brief glimpse of precious light, and

back into the dark?

Is it just a cruel hoax, the great irony of being?

Perhaps it really is as simple as:

“It is what it is.”

Dark to light to dark,

unknowing to knowing to unknowing again.

Is it just the end we fear or the

fear of the end?

What is it that we fear?

 

Fall Into Winter

 

There’s an empty feeling when

autumn becomes winter, when

sharp, chill winds scatter

dead leaves across cold ground.

There’s a sense of loss then,

loss of warmth, of hope for

one more spring

one more sunrise

a feeling of well-being

a chance to feel right

to belong, to celebrate

joy, community, memory,

to love, to care, to matter,

to simply be.

J. B. Hogan has published over 300 stories and poems and eleven books, including Bar Harbor, Bounty Riders, Time and Time Again, Mexican Skies, Tin Hollow, Living Behind Time, Losing Cotton, The Rubicon, Fallen, The Apostate, and Angels in the Ozarks (nonfiction, local professional baseball history). He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.