‘A Reason for Hope’ and Other Poetry by C.B. Anderson

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A Reason for Hope

__The sky so bright,
__The morning mist,
__The inbound flight
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__Are all a part
__Of one big scene
__That makes the heart
A diachronic smithereen

__Which gropes ahead
__To find its place
__And make its bed
In the accommodating space

__Where it belongs.
__And so we sing
__The ancient songs
That come straight at us with the ring

__Of truth. In fact,
__A rousing spirit
__Caught in the act
Will save us, though we tend to fear it.

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The Highroad to Damascus

_Elias was a Levantine
_Who learned when he was seventeen
_That women don’t like men who ride on bikes.
_He saved, then bought a used Mercedes
_To make some headway with the ladies—
From that day forward, mostly he got likes.

_He thought he needed brand-new threads
_Designed to turn the ladies’ heads,
_But nothing off the rack would fit his frame.
_And so he drove into Beirut
_To buy a custom-tailored suit
And put his old competitors to shame.

_They say the girls in Tel Aviv
_Still wring their hands and sorely grieve
_His marriage to that siren from Damascus.
_Nobody knows where roads will lead
_Or where a man shall spill his seed.
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden.  Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India.  His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.