Short Cairns Poems

Liberty Bell, cracked and muted after the war
Apostrophe after every catastrophe under par
Homerun in the Long March of Second War
Coins on cairns of foes and heroes in jar
An exclamation point in war under par....

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The thirst to tell stories
To understand what came before
And how, stumbling
stupidly
with bloodshot and laughing eyes
we cobble together
little piles of rocks
which from afar
tower to a something other than Babel...

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In dank and dusty basements,
where people die alone,
and ancient cairns by weathered hands
were built with rock and stone,
in cabins long abandoned,
corners pile with leaves windblown,
on battlefields resounding as the
bullet strikes the bone,
when more than one has, indeed,
o're the cuckold's nest flown,
we realize that time is nothing
and nothing's ever known.


©Danielle White...

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Some enact outstanding feats
of altruism in the world,
some pray, administer and comfort;
both create shrines of hope.

Yet there are others tasked to
reveal waymarks on invisible pathways,
cairns and inuksuk, signs upon the trackless;
word-symbols, 
akin to rocks and pebbles.

Poets who scribble, often by chance, 
point a way, and when they do
God builds a small shrine
for them also....

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Walls too high, above the grasses I see
Walls above my eye, below the world of me
Fencing my eye, lions of grey roaring
Reaching the sky, birds of prey soaring.

Walls of lamentation are memories of war
Galls of incantation are cairns in jar
Facing the wailing walls are men of tears
Groping for simping halls are women of fears.

Walls of life, memories in time
Walks of life, melodies in rhyme
Love from wells, portrait of loving souls
Waters in wells, vignette of redeemed souls....

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