80spoems/bard

BARD

I see a man on t.v. from Turkey
who was given away as a child
because he was recognized
to possess the bardic gift.

Such a powerful word: recognize.
How fortunate, I think, he was
being sent to the master to learn,
not merely locked out of the house,
or left unwanted in an upstairs room.

No one to lead you by the hand
to the place they can see you belong.
They only knew you did not fit in with them.
Shunning you as close as they could come
to what was required:
sending you to the stone-walled
emptiness of your own being,
a bare garden to be built over time.
Frightening when you’re small
and can’t see out to the horizon.

Errant blooms dropping seeds over the wall,
no accident of nature
but life providing for its own.
Rusting junk you carried home,
not knowing what belonged in your world.

Such an active faith it took
to cling to the vision of color
in a world of tan stone and dirt.
Waiting to acquire tomato,
to find seeds for chives,
gathering geranium clippings
here and there,
a fern put out by someone’s trash.
Knocking down rock to make room for a gate
as soon as you learned how to build one.

The self-taught learn slowly
hence, the need for the bard,
who sings in rhymes
so memory clings to what it needs.

6/14/86
UCSD Apts.