Bette Cerf Hill
Poetry Library
Lettered Here and There - © Bette Cerf Hill

Clear blue sky down to
trees in full
spiked with wooden poles
tied with black wire
Birded, here and there.

Long grasses
lean into the road
leveled for traveling
among mail boxes
Lettered, here and there.

Who stripped the tree
to carry the black wire?
Who gouged out the road?
Who opens the box
and puts the writing in?
Who opens the box
and takes the writing out?
Hope, here and there.

Despair sometimes
under the bending grass
deep between the lines
hidden in the boxes
random as a universe
of bright days and starred nights
Waiting, here and there.
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The Secret Garden

The secret garden
Hides
in refracted light
A vast clean sweep of violet green
Where shadows move dappled
On steppingstones
Ivy tangles
Dense as seaweed
Dampness turns to moss and
Hollyhocks climb
Past stoic trees and restless sky
Where the air is hungry for the breather
Birds wait
listening for song
In the Secret Garden
Summer is suspended
Forever
While a Ruby-Throated Humming Bird
Thunders by

© Bette Cerf Hill, 7/23/07

Prayer - © Bette Cerf Hill

Tragedy dries the throat
And leaves a shaft of grief
A column of ashes
Deeper in our collective soul
Then the buildings stood tall.
When tenants did not leap
Into the blue, indifferent sky
Nor run for their lives
Nor cover their mouths,
Nor cry, scream
Nor turn to silent dust of stone.
And others did not
Spend their days sifting rubble
For a fragment of hope
A whisper of life to find only
Human fragments of despair.
We plead God’s mercy
Who is scooping up the souls of suicide pilots
To sit at His right hand.
The true God
Always on both sides of war,
His cloak the cover for a billion wrongs.
Death to thousands in a single hour
Is progress for the primitives
Christian, Muslim, Jew
Who destroy the living for the
Promise from a few
Who say they know God’s will.
Holy Father, in whatever tongue,
Leave us alone to wander through our short day
And love each other
And not you,
Prince of Peace, Messiah, Savior, Allah,
Vishnu, Buddha, Yahweh, Zeus, Ra, Jesus,
Nor self-appointed interpreters
All who stop our throats with ashes
On a sunny Tuesday
Under the vast and innocent
Perfect and empty
Clear blue sky.
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