Gary Ronnie

STASIS

We teeter on the cusp of dusk and dawn.
Extinguished eyes stare down sardonic years:
No will to quit, no heart to carry on.

A mountless knight---lance shattered, sword
undrawn, mail blackened by corrosive dragon sneers---
concedes the field to stern, sepulchral dawn.

A mariner adrift---bent sexton gone,
Polaris snuffed, his sea skills mutineers:
No heart to reef, no craft to carry on.

A starving archer sights an orphaned fawn---
the gut string snaps; bow breaks; he falls and hears
the keening of the daybleak, mourning dawn.

Afraid to play a king, we lose a pawn;
so loath to live, we slough our souls like tears.
We teeter on the cusp of dusk and dawn:
No will to quit, no heart to carry on.

* * *

Pastoral

The fire in the clearing has no one
to warm. The pine trees, if they feel at all,
feel that the sun is absent; they've begun
their vigil, sensing nothing - not the fall
of cones or stars. Now moths are flying to
the flames, but, unaware of poets, swerve
away, again, again - and live. So too
the animals: The man-smell must be served.

The fire in the clearing has no one
to tend it, none to huddle near its heat . . . . .
I built it - tried to bring a sense of sun
to night - and then fled back to lamp-lit streets.

And should the forest burn, the creatures die,
I'll save the ashes, though I may not cry.

Gary Ronnie was a teacher and technical trainer before multiple sclerosis forced his retirement 2001. Long ago, his poetry and prose appeared many times in college magazines. He published a book of verse in 1974 (Dust Storm), and in the Dark Ages (1967), won the annual poetry contest at the University of Minnesota. A runner-up was Garrison Keillor. Their careers followed dissimilar success trajectories thereafter.