Scope

The scope of the thing,
its scale,
its pace,
escape the bounds of the 
children’s understanding.

They play downstairs,
then outside,
then in the backyard,
pull the dog around
and make forts.

Then, once in a while
look up, look around,
hear the relative quiet,
almost conceive of the thing
and then go back to running. 


NUMBERS

The numbers
don’t quite
add up. 

Or, I can’t 
fathom where
they all come from,

Or map their
origins,
or trail signs. 

The numbers
rise so fast,
like a spike,

Like out of nowhere,
out of air,
an instant tree trunk. 

And with each one
many others hidden
and still, death. 

​​Electric

My son is sitting next to me
in a pile of stuffed animals,
stuffys he calls them.

He is showing me his poetry
from school
in a bright colored slide deck.

The poems are mostly
some form of haiku
with themes about nature.

They are coupled with 
images of lightning,
or something that looks like it.

He is reading them to me,
with enthusiasm
for the beauty of nature.

His voice rises and falls,
and I cannot get over
how astonishingly beautiful he is.


Cough

One cough and 
you have the attention of 
the entire store. 

One sneeze and
the nearby people will
swivel their heads. 

Try to be 
unassuming and quiet,
like a good citizen.

Generations asking 
different things
of the old or the young.

Don’t congregate!
Don’t ruin our future!
Stop hoarding toilet paper!

Everything moving from
the profound
to the banal.

The days stretching
like distribution curves
with dramatically different deviations. 

Five Poems by Morgan Bazilian