Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Poem: Mute Fingers

Mute Fingers

Bitter sweet waters
on a tearful strand;
his mute fingers
writing in the sand.

He could not enter,
he could not understand;
this benign ancient mariner
could not fathom the hearts of Man.

They worship diamonds so divine,
scorched from the bowels of the earth;
but of his sand-scripted shrine,
they rip asunder into the hearth.

And the four seas they divide,
claim and reclaim;
the master calligrapher did unite
all lands as the same.

Yet he remains a patient fisher
of simple women and men –
poets, painters, songwriters and seekers –
caught on a lark now and then.

You hear them in the children’s laughter,
you see them playing in the sea,
you see them in their mother and father,
and you can hear their hearts in plea.

A plea the plovers and the sandpipers
will understand;
for he was their teacher and provider
long before Man became Man.

- Joseph Lai


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