Power Out! by Hayley Broadway Power out! All dark and black... Fret not Body bumps Hand gliding softly Feet and the floor Rug! another rug! Budy bumping into another We mesh and dance swiftly Away in the dark Hayley Broadway is a deaf blind researcher and protractile educator working on several grants projects, including a national institutes of health study of language acquisition among deaf blind children. She lives in Austine.
Poetry
The Flashbacks
The Flashbacks 1. This was where it began; I ran outside, naked before my first birthday to see what all the booming from the sky was about. 2. I was a little bird in the tiny cage of the dark space, learned to not cry even when hungry. 3. The skating boy on the pond; his mom, at the gate of her house, stopped me passing by to ask a few questions about my parents, told her son to come home; his word "No--" What was in her mind? In sixth grade graduation, why he chose me to sing the song? 4. The old elm with a large hollow in the trunk; by his side a shabby cedar tree, beneath them the well, the eye watching me watching it, questing hidden tomorrow ©Byung A. Fallgren
The Barbed Wire Fence
The Barbed Wire Fence by Joon-hi You look menacing. All I want to do is to find my uncle, but I cannot do that because of you. But it's not your fault, not your fault. --from the book Hal-Abeoji's Wish Joon-hi, the eight-year-old boy, wants to find his grand-uncle who is supposed to be living in North Korea, before his grandfather dies and he becomes an orphan. Can he find him? ©Byung A. Fallgren
Stars
Stars
Robert Frost (1874--1963)
How countlessly they congregate
O'ver our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as tree
when wintry winds do blow!--
As if with keenness for our fate,
Out faltering few steps on
To white rest, and place of rest
invisible at dawn,--
And yet with neither love nor hate,
those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
without the gift of sight.
Ten Days
Ten Days The bell shattered the silence. She opened the door ajar, the chain in safety; her heart leaps to see his face, the past ten days fluttering in her mind; little bird of time. He went to visit his siblings , and she didn't go with him. Law-daughter teased. He might not come back. It was our agreement, Mother said. shortened visit was not in his favor; her stay would be only a few days. When young, they were like, me-and-my-shadow togetherness; when old, they each have their own shadow; they even have their own space for ease. the ten days separation is water; water cannot be cut. ©Byung A. Fallgren
Shadow
Shadow (From Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, by Tao Yuanming.) There is no way to preserve life. Drugs of immortality are instruments of folly. I would gladly wander in paradise, But it is far away and there is no road. Since the day that I was joined to you We have shared all our joys and pains. While you rested in the shade, I left you a while: But till the end we shall be together. Our joint existence is impermanent: Sadly together we shall slip away. That when the body decays Fame should also go Is a thought un-endurable, burning the heart. Let us strive and labor while yet we may To do some deed that men will praise. Wine may in truth dispel our sorrow, But how compare it with lasting fame? "Substance Shadow, and Spirit" appears in Arthur Waley's A hundred and Seventy Chines Poems (Alfred Knopf, 1918). Tao Yuanming , also known as Tao Qian, is believed to have been born in the year 365 in China. He is one of the great hermit poets of ancient Chinese literature. He died in the year 427.
Worry is not total Waste
Worry is not total Waste frog song lost its fantasy why wail? sky is hazy and the air smells of smoke bright red sun deer-eaten tulip and withering forsythia bloom roots are still alive ©Byung A. Fallgren
The Days When the Stars Wept
The Days when the Stars Wept
To be a youth was a curse in nineteen-sixties in the tiny corner of the world; the peninsular divided in two, South and North; joining in the bloody demos, after school hours, like extra-curricular classes. mostly out of patriotism; to rebuild the loose system. the more often the parties went on, the more of them fell, the petals in the storm. Everyone prayed in silence for miracle, to save them. Then the time had come; the night sky above the city was blazing; the air smelled of gunpowder. Everyone's heart leaped, but no one talked about it, in fear of the dark net that might swallow them. the old leader's demise, and the General assumed the Blue House as the frontier of the new age. Many years later, the childhood friends still gathered in memory of their brothers who vanished in the night wind. ©Byung A. Fallgren
May
May all night long gutter drums with drizzle Mother's heart Mother's Day poor daughter sends her selfie with a love poem Mother thinks that is the best gift she's ever received ©Byung A. Fallgren
Nothing Gold Can…
Nothing Gold Can Stay Robert Frost, 1874--1963 Nature's first green is gold, Her heart hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour, So dawn goes to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Byung A. Fallgren 