This is my 539th poem <br />According to estimates <br />Made by unreliable sources <br />What was not figured in <br />Were the many poems discarded <br />Or discounted along the course <br />Of a life whose discernment <br />Has often been skewed, <br />Along with a hundred or more <br />Burned up intentionally <br />In a northern Idaho wood stove <br />Cold cold winter of 1979 <br /> <br />Still, that amounts to about 10 poems <br />for every year of my chronological life on earth <br />Each one a miracle and blessing <br />Each one a multi-faceted gem <br />Each one a broken-hearted, love-lost confession <br />Each one represents the cost of life until then <br />Each one sounds a note of suffering <br />Each one born of a frightful dream <br />Each one another loss another gain in green fields <br />Each one turning and tossed like an insomniac's vision <br />Each one bearing its cross and shame <br />All tallied amounts to just about everything <br /> <br />But who's counting? <br />In the end the ashes of all these poems <br />Will blend with the earth in the infinite <br />Disintegration of all matter where nothing gained <br />Equals nothing lost and we all stand <br />A band of bedraggled and broken angels <br />Before the throne on Judgement day <br />Shimmering in our lonesome bodies <br />Quivering at the sound of impending <br />Jurisprudence we shall float above ground <br />Circling in the dance of fireflies lost in mating rituals <br />Only now we'll be cast off enlightened in eternal flight<br /><br />Phillip Michael Sawatzky<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/539th-poem-hope/
