Jeff McCallum

I really want to write long beautiful poems, short wonderful poems. Pen poems about the beauty and wonder of everyday life. The power of love, the miracles common people and Holy Ones witness every day. I really think I can.

The salt of you and I tastes

not like a tear

rather

mingles

musky on your flesh

subtle

shadowed like the redwood forest

Does not roll large and slow upon the cheek

an ocean to be drown in

rather

lingers

tiny tidal pools

warm upon your belly

reminders of the sea

Does not burst and flow

rather

gathers

morning dew upon the flower of us

the smell of moisture in the desert

the promise of life to come

borne upon the wind and rain of us

And then up pops the Patriot Act, the FBI, the NSA. What is a poet to do?

America

When an airplane surprises me

popping straight from the corner of the terrace

or the building across the street

I do not fear

or run to what I anticipate to be the drop site

for relief aid or weapons for the cause

No bombs will fall on my home

My children do not wait with pails

to fill with rice and water

I live in the land of the free

the home of the brave

Rather I fear

the midnight knock

the Patriot Act

the new Taliban

arriving at my door with gags and chains and shackles