Robert S. King – Three Poems

Far from Unnatural Growls

A forest welcomes my silence.
I am lost on purpose and seek
a green paradise a long way from fall.
A thousand summer leaves touch
the reverent hiker. A trail
of moss rolls out the carpet
for any harmless creature
that finds this way.

For now the heavy feet of progress
do not break limbs here. The forest
hides but would touch
with poison ivy leaves
all who come here
in concrete boots and chained
to the growling steel of saws.

But listen─peace is not silent.
The birds and breeze whistle together
a love song woven
from a warning call.

Hatching the Golden Egg

Long I’ve lived inside the war drum.
Now let me peck my heart from its shell,
by wing or foot pass from darkness to bright horizon.
May the cold and hungry join the journey,
charmed by guiding lights and golden rules.

Let empty shells dissolve into liquid gold.
Let spilled blood become holy water
quenching the free birds of paradise
of which old souls have always dreamed
and dreamed,
and dreamed . . .

How to Fix Global Warming

Earth slings me away on its final revolution,
frees me of gravity and laws I have broken.
I spent some of my fortune on cargo and fuel
siphoned from the veins of the weak.

A bloody wind launches my space yacht
on a voyage away from the planet’s
molten heart, from the death
rattle of its last eruption.
I am in the fleet of the few
rich enough to mine another world.

I did not escape untouched.
The red stain from earth’s veins
dries as a birthmark on my body.
As smog and stardust clear,
and the stars blink again
at a safe distance,
I recount my wealth
and watch the skull
of a dead world float by.

Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press and edits the literary journal, Good Works Review. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Southern Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press, 2014) and Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014).