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David M. Hoenig

The August Selected Poet is David M. Hoenig

Please feel free to email David at: lionetravail@gmail.com

David

LIFE IN DALI’S CLOCKS

The hours move like sliding sand
which shifts at gravity’s command.
My days flow past like water brushed
against my skin before it rushed
away down river’s bed. I stand

and watch events which dare demand
attention. I misunderstand,
my focus blurred, importance hushed,
as hours slide like moving sand.

The overload is all unplanned—
my brain’s slipped gears and can’t withstand
the deluge of the moments crushed
in tidal flow of all that’s flushed
away in sweep of second hand—
the hours drop through glass, like sand.

AT THE BEDSIDE

Her eyes remain those limpid pools
which I, a one-time king of fools,
had dived into in age gone by.
No dock nearby to throw a tie,
I risked, then, drowning in those jewels.

I learned more there than in the schools
which taught me fundamental rules.
And now, though she expects to die,
her eyes remain such limpid pools.

We sit together as the tools
of health impart a med which cools
the fever boiling in her eye.
I fear her death may be nearby:
the mirrors of her soul show ghouls.
And still, her eyes are limpid pools.

DISCOVERING YOU MISSED THE MOMENTS

Having in the fire one iron
too many, one might pray that time
were a commodity one might purchase, as on trial.
Crippled by a lack of awareness of self,
the spirit’s far and lonely fall
is like snow, the silent sob of heaven weeping.

Straying far from course, ignorance of heart’s weeping
causes magic to flee from needle's iron.
Summer’s smolder soughs to Winter's whip without ‘tweening Fall,
and, too busy to notice the passage of time,
the self-absorbed and selfish self
misses gavel's irrevocable bang at end of trial.

Like ancient column’s neglected trial,
where sandy tears trickle through centuries of weeping
before ultimate collapse, comes a time to doubt self.
Of how much value is working will of iron
if that base metal is corroded and weakened by time
misspent? All that it might have supported would fall!

Then, over-brimming salty nectar will fall,
when aged bloom's tribulation and trial
has just about said last farewell to time.
An empty house, an empty life, inspires weeping,
with all the inexorable grace of molten iron
spilling through cold, abandoned furnace of inner self.

Pray, rather, that timely, sharp scrutiny of self
recognizes the impending, precipitous fall
prophesied in wrinkled deficiencies which no iron
could smooth. And though introspection may prove trial
both painful and embarrassing, no useless weeping
could possibly atone for mortal sin of wasted time.

It might reveal, instead, for the very first time,
the fragile and naked core of long-walled-away self,
tempering the wild sorrow of soul’s weeping.
Then, how to stand tall once again after the fall
can be learned only through error and trial,
long after impotent regret has cleaved like iron.

So do not wait for last moment’s trial, when regret’s fist of iron
forsakes the velvet glove to fall hard, scourging and chastening self
for wasted time, as you lay on that final threshold, ruefully weeping.

David is a practicing physician who is a well-rondeau'ed individual, and who occasionally suffers from seasonal elegies. He writes both fiction and poetry, and links to his published works can be found HERE