Poet, composer of music (Max Able / Abel, Rawls & Hayes) and spoken-word performer (Scapeweavel), L. Ward Abel lives in rural Georgia, and has been widely published in the U.S. and Europe, including
White Pelican Review, The Pedestal, Versal (Netherlands),
Open Wide (UK),
Ink Pot, Texas Poetry Journal, Kritya (India), others. His chapbook,
Peach Box and Verge, has been recently published by Little Poem Press
(http://celaine.com/LittlePoemPress). Twenty of his poems are featured, along with an interview, in the upcoming print issue of
erbacce (UK). His new book of poems,
Jonesing For Byzantium, will be published soon at UK Authors Press (London). Abel’s website is
www.universecanoe.com.
For Marie, Having Crossed the Border
Rockets overhead, they speak of memory
and night, and things that oppose music; I try
to imagine the one that just exploded
nearby
as a violin…when I dream of it this way, it counteracts
the hate that ignited and launched. Renders it perfect. That violin:
I have placed it in a letter-box, behind a clarity
that she, Marie, would appreciate…so clear as to allow
its strings to vibrate, by remote, within impregnable glass
immune to destruction. To war. What tune
does the hot rush emit before blasting?
Ultimately missiles cannot kill that beauty, the power
of transformation and survival, as fear translates
into anti-fear, immortal; so strong it is weak, so weak
it is strong. Marie manipulates the bow, rosin and
G, D, A, E…her golden hair reflecting
a morning far away now, a symphony beyond epoch. The word
“hope” cannot do justice.
