G. Louis Heath, Ph.D., Berkeley, 1969, is Emeritus Professor, Ashford University, Clinton, Iowa. He enjoys reading his poems at open mics. He often hikes along the Mississippi River, stopping to work on a poem he pulls from his back pocket, weather permitting. He has published poems in a wide array of journals. His books include Leaves Of Maple and Long Dark River Casino.

Prelude To The Un-Happened Event

Fireflies in the night stop their light
As droning begins. Still rapt eyes face
Withering natural facts, rebels against

The pulpit. From low hills, ectoplasmic
Filigree mists thread from blackness in
Flooded defiles to ensnare the unseeing

Orbs, prelude to the un-happened event
Of a theocentric world, black holed in
The center. Eclipse of fire-flown light

By night and of sun by day, sharpens the
Noise in the sky with silhouettes of total
Black. Man and woman stumble in their

High-tech meadow of bounty, guts long
Replete with the widgets of their minds,
Swallowed with seldom a forethought.

They hear the droning homing in. In
Blind haste and terror, they scrabble
For the precipice to keep from falling
In.

A Dinosaur Stalks Us

Another baby was born today in the town
I call home, another person to love and

Hate, to step into the passing scene of
Strife and counter-strife besetting us all.

I like to think we elderly bequeath a world
Worth living to my neighbor’s bundle of

Would-be joy. But that is only pie in the
Sky for the new heartbeat among us. We

Are no safer in our jungle of technology
And waste than the cave man huddled by

His fire. We have come so far and so short.
In modern man caves, we eat fast food fast

With plastic to soothe our nerves, alert for
The time-traveling dinosaur that stalks us.

In The Stillness Of The Primeval Forest

They leave time and space as they look into
The other’s eyes in this high enclave of trees,

A mysterious bond rising. A mountain bluebird
Tittups on a granite outcrop in a palm of dappled

Sun. The bird flits into a shaft of evening amber,
Then out, back and forth, like a metronome, not

For so very long. Soon it flies into deep shadow as
They stand rapt in the natural drama, only motion

To the bird, yet a sign to them. Nerves abraded from
The jagged odyssey, they drink in the only face each

Can see, though both long for their mirrors. Forest
And bird work their power in this primordial bower.

Long ascent from nowhere in the defile fetches destiny
On a rock in the evergreen fastness. Here they can be

Among the trees. And so they sit with a feral thump on
The rocks to behold the awesome bower and hold each

Other close. Free now at last, they feel their beset senses
Revive, refreshed in the stillness of the primeval forest.