When you’re getting close to putting a book to bed, you have to mop up all the little epigrams, if you’re an epigramatist, as am I. I throw them in some logical order into a sequence entitled Multum in Parvo, Latin for Much in Little.
Multum in Parvo IV.
I. Testimony
Although at times I’ve undermined my fitness,
I hope to be a giver, not a taker,
not just a West River bronco breaker
dragged to a bench and judged.
For I have trudged
far too long in the wilds to bear false witness
either to God’s creation or my Maker.
And gratitude? I am not a forsaker.
II. Golf
on a quatrain by Peter Rogers
“The sky seems bluer,
the air purer,
your eyesight truer,
your swing, surer.”
Into the sand
you hook your shot
and understand
like it or not,
God means to bust us.
There ain’t no justice.
III. Retrieved
Centered on Christ: I caught a glimpse today.
Our meeting was serene.
I knew him as a teen,
never foresaw he could turn out this way.
A party animal,
he fled our carnival
to search the Bible on his knees and pray.
IV. November, 2012
“Our elephant gun has been reloaded,
and my trigger finger is itchy.”
–Warren Buffet
My little pup is frisky.
Snow fell through the night.
The footing here is risky
as we stride forth, first light.
I’ve loaded my little gun
with five shot for a pheasant.
Grant us a bracing run
and one Thanksgiving present.
V. Peter Rogers
Our friends perish, all of them, every one:
their sails luff with the sailing of the swan,
their days downed by the setting of the sun
while we grieve for the getting that is gone.
VI. One More River
I collect river crossings
often in nightly tossings,
spurring my skittish mare
over each braided ford
of every stream
we dare,
and always in my dream
I meet the Lord
waiting on farther banks
and tell him thanks.
VII. Ed Melroe
Six wives. What’s up? Five vows that you have broken,
sworn before man and God. May this one last,
and Fast Eddie, here is a tiny token
of friendship dredged from decades long since past.
Had Irv put the proceeds in Treasuries,
today you’d be unfathomably rich,
but welcome to a pauper’s miseries.
You graze your heifers in a roadside ditch,
the only man who killed two dozen deer
driving home from the bar. They met their end.
Drink is behind you, and I hope you steer
better and know that Tim is your fast friend.
VIII. The Spindle
“Your poems brighten the landscape of my world.”
Howard, when I am curled,
foetal position underneath my bed,
I who never wed
dream of roads not taken
and then I waken,
seeking the spindle round which we are twirled.
Source:
http://rarereaders.seablogger.com/2012/11/multum-in-parvo-iv/