Two Poems and One Prose Poem by Rick Hartwell

 

Nurse Says,

 

“You’ve the heart of a seventeen-year-old!”

Although the chest she tests is over seventy;

it might be humorous except for the facts.

 

How old is this transplant, this beating heart,

bequeathed by her parents in recognition of

her persistent imperative to live every beat.

 

Perhaps this heart of ours – hers and mine,

now two-and-twenty – has aged five years

since starting after stopping or being stopped.

 

Perhaps now it might be eighty, yet vigorous,

having absorbed my cells and fluids and life;

we – the girl and I – might barter for a third.

Street Safety

 

Black satin cat pours

herself over the curb

into the storm drain;

quicksilver response

to suburban decay and

feline angst.

                     As a kid

I, too, used to pour over

curbs into storm drains

away from bullies and

parental observation.

Ribbons in the Sea

 

There are ribbons in their sea, currents below the surface, that run as true in their courses as the trade winds above. Old sailors, wise fishermen, and maritime peoples know this. As true as the Great Salt Road guided traders and pilgrims back and forth across the great reaches of Asia, these rivers in the sea served the great schools of fish and mammals below, trans oceanic birds above, and skilled mariners on the surface. Cold shores were heated. Hot lands cooled. Navigators steered. But all this has begun to fall apart, These ocean pathways are falling into ruin. The climate has changed. Storms appear where and when they rarely did before. Waters cool or warm in disparate places. Mammals of the sea lose their bearings, as their old highways no longer run true, and some become dazed or panic stricken, dashing themselves ashore only to expire in the glare of days they were never meant to see. Flocks of birds drop from the sky, frozen in flight, to drop disoriented in death. Man, in his frenzy to hold dominion over the land and sky and sea, has broken those roads within the waters and at some point man will realize his own frenzied disorientation and may be cast upon a barren and forsaken land where he may also languish and die, a victim of his own reckless drives.

Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) living in California with his wife of forty-seven years, Sally (upon whom he is emotionally, physically, and spiritually dependent), two grown children, two granddaughters, and fifteen cats! Like Blake, Thoreau and Merton, he believes that the instant contains eternity.