Nolo Segundo, pen name of a retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia], became a published poet in his 8th decade in over 270 literary journals in 22 countries, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net, and has 3 collections published in trade softcover: THE ENORMITY OF EXISTENCE, OF ETHER AND EARTH, and SOUL SONGS.
A House, A Cup Of Tea, A Boat, A Puzzle
This house is another house
when I alone inhabit it.
These rooms speak different tongues
when I alone listen closely.
These chairs appending rounded table
await freshened visits from friends,
friends I welcome to my house
when I alone inhabit it….
My soul swirls in a cup of tea,
I drink, I am warmed,
and repeated nights of coldness
forget themselves in the inner spaces.
I walk these childhood rooms
sensing, probing a magnitude
standing like an invisible colossus
outside my reason,
outside my sight,
outside my consciousness….
I stir my solitude with a straw,
inebriate myself on the otherness
of this house flipped over to a kingdom:
my soul the subject, my soul the earth,
and my soul the condor soaring
towards the Divine….
I grasp its presence so easily,
with less strain than fingertips
embracing a lukewarm teacup.
Like a personless boat
I am being drifted by some tide
whose source eludes me,
whose destination confounds me
but I’ll bob the ripples
as like thousands of breasts
they caress me unto arousal,
enduring to embrace the ocean.
All of our time given makes a puzzle
of the jigsaw pattern whose pieces
are thrown down in random order
or in order beyond our fathom
and we haphazardly assemble…
who gets to finish his puzzle?
© Nolo Segundo