The Pond

Maybe it was fear…
fear of vanishing  into damp memories 
of the past, 
memories that 
assembled on
the pond’s bottom:
 
Perhaps it was because 
I have had murmurs in my chest, 
telltale pulsating rhythms… 
telling me I am old.

But the beautiful pond 
with its silky blue skin  kept urging me to enter into  its watery realm, 
to go deep  into its cold body, 
to taste the coolness of youth. 

I approached the edge…
looked deep into   blue moisture and dove. 

My body felt
the pond’s  watery arms surrounding it,  caressing it;
  like a long lost lover. 

My fingers  reached  toward 
   bed of dark blue ripples. 

I tasted the sweet coldness of its body 
the weight of its body
on me. 

I started to surface, 
felt a deep pain,  and slowly sunk downward, 
to the bottom: where the pond swallowed my soul

Ionic Reactions

The laser beams of words of condemnation 
Generated a heated intensity within
The colorful holographic prisms in my mind, 

The force of light interacted illogically with
The cellular distribution of the high
Energy densities in my wandering brain, 

No logical reflection of understanding
Permeates the incoherent ion particles
Exploding amidst the scaffolds of my brain,
Then suddenly other energies of torpor 
Wrenched at the inertial based confinement 
Of my chemically unbalanced thoughts,

And all I was able to observe were the
Ephemeral inane irrationalities surrounding
The banal outer world of human absurdities,

Why didn’t the impact of irrational-collisions
Of selective and prejudiced subjective opinions
Destroy themselves instead those of others,

In the chemical ionic reaction of opposites I 
Observed chaos and absurdity abounding
The illogical reaction to opposite forces,

All I could sanely observe in this era of chaos 
and conspiracies was a negligible
Amount of original and semi-coherent sense
Within the brains of banal ideological, humans!

James, retired professor and octogenarian, and Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee, has had four poetry books; “Solace Between the Lines,” “Light,” “Ancient Rhythms,” and “The Silent Pond,” 1495 poems, five novels, and 35 short stories published, worldwide. He earned his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO, and his doctorate from BYU.