Ward Kelley

Brittle Twigs
 
Adrift in the black universe, you are
a cold dot.
 
Communication is so undeveloped;
you can only grope with intuition.
Words are feckless, flailing arms,
brittle twigs who break at any
attempt at interweaving.
 
Maybe you’re a heretic,
and do not believe the one
thing bringing comfort.
 
No, for embedded in your soul
has always been an odd hope
who whispers you might,
someday, find a way
to soften and shape
these twigs. 



A Marginal Device

The ghost peers into his hands, church steeple
fingers poised, a religious tent ready to descend
upon some thought not quite ready to be
enunciated.
 
The ghost knows his voice is imperfect,
a marginal device unable to convey
succinct thoughts to any other human . . .
this task of communication
a capricious one,
 
gnarled, it appears, by the false premise
the ghost is human enough to talk
to humans.
 
   
 
Enchantment in the Hands of Time
 
Enchantment surrounds you, although
it is mostly invisible to your eyes.
 
Choose anything and stare at it
until your eyes lose their focus,
until you forget your own
personality for a moment,
and you will glimpse the terse
ends of the world’s joke.
 
You might think this is only science,
the refracted rays of images bent
by your own bored lenses,
but science is mostly humor
in the hands of Time and only
taken seriously by contemporary
practitioners. A thousand years
from now even our bones will bear
a certain humor as enchantment
surrounds them.
 

Ward Kelley has seen his poems appear in journals world wide. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee whose publication credits include such journals as: Plainsongs, Another Chicago Magazine, GSU Review, Rattle, The Chaffin Journal, Midstream, Zuzu’s Petals, Literary Potpourri, Ginger Hill, Sunstone, Pif, Whetstone, Melic Review, Thunder Sandwich, Potpourri and Skylark. He was the
recipient of the Nassau Review Poetry Award for 2001. Kelley is the author of two paperbacks: “histories of souls,” a poetry collection, and “Divine Murder,” a novel; he also has an epic poem, “comedy incarnate” on CD and CD ROM.