POETRY

       Quatrain #2932

The sun hangs like a low fruit
Red and overripe in the hazy sky
Ready to burst and pour
Its richness, wasted, on the horizon.


       Quatrain #2934

In the bright rationality
Of the laboratory
We chase away the night of chaos
With the clear numbers of precision


       Quatrain #2937

We cut down the trees
So we could get rich
Now mudslides have covered
The only road back home


       Quatrain #2940

In the funeral parlor
All are drunk with grief
The clueless pastor
Is the designated driver


       Quatrain #2943

Mulch is bread
Humus is wine
Body of Earth
Broken for you


       Quatrain #2946

A hundred pickup trucks
Scramble to park
In the patch of shade
Of the world’s last tree.


       Quatrain #2947

If a being from Heaven came
And demanded to see proof that Earth
Had goodness and wisdom
I would show her a leaf.

copyright 2008 Stanley A. Rice