The Only Fact

A death is a fact.

It is the only fact.

Many deaths is a question.

It is the only question.

 

A number is a fact.

It records. It answers.

Many numbers is a lie.

They manipulate. They distort.

 

A child is a fact

her future before her.

A child’s death

sears a hole in the future.

 

A void.

 

We are all children before the void

when tomorrow is the land of the lucky few. 

 

12-12-2020

Others

Maybe                                         too many people
have gotten the message                    too quickly
that this social                                       distancing
was supposed to be easy.                  Real change
is not easy. Saving the world              is not easy.
This is your sacrifice.                                Own it.
Do it well                            and without self-pity.
There are no others                               right now
who will do the saving                             for you.
We are all others.                            We are all us.

05-11-2020

noise

i hurl my noise fearlessly into the void

so that I might know that I exist.

echo, it comes back to me

small round rock, pressed into the crease of my palm 

i relinquish it to the tide with a mighty ugh

The waves, already churning, will bring it back 

again for another palm another day

i fight gravity itself, wishing, i think, 

for my small ball to take flight just this time. 

it soars, peaks, changes direction and

plummets to the earth again, and again

as far as I travel many years many roads

still I travel home, ever more whole and real than before

until I travel out again

the lines I seek 

sure and straight 

defy me always,

disappoint.

in their place I find only

circles

endless, eternal. ever and always

a little

mysterious

©2018 Donna Jo Wallace

10-19-2018

Star Stuff

We did not ask
to be catapulted among the stars
never knowing where the universe may take us,
how far, or why

we have been left like debris
along the trail of stars
no map, no instructions
only questions, and desire.

Still, this hostile place gave birth
to the paths we walk

and showed us what a home is.

This is the long game of long games,
the universe itself,
creating, destroying, inventing, rearranging
into a future not envisioned

it is wrong, somehow, that what had burned so bright

leaves a hole, a hole in the universe
a presence known only by its absence

It is an accident of life, isn’t it,

that any of us should even be here,

to be alive at the same moment

in all of everything.

We cling to our certainty that we are here now,

but we are each, after all, only a flicker, a whisper.

The questions that arise from the void create possibility.

It is only in certainty that we are truly lost.

©2014 Donna Jo Wallace.

Haiku

Haiku

One small blue green sphere
Gasping for its own fresh air
Spins out of control

©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.