WATCHING FROM THE SIDELINES

Silent they stood, like the trees,

Only...there were no trees...

Just them, huddled deep inside themselves,

Hands clasped, or motionless at their sides,

Eyes regarding with the patient waiting

Of the long-oppressed.

Vaguely, he was aware of them

As they stood in their unmoving statueness,

Like pillars, holding up the bricks,

Only breathing.

Only watching.

Silent as the trees.

Their waiting watchfulness crossed the sand,

A movement motionless as death,

A willing that he should win the day

So that the blade of such a thing

Might cut their binding roots

And they might flow again into livingness.

They did not care that he should live

Or that his blood might wet the grains

Of sand impersonal beneath his boots.

They cared only that the devil facing him

Might die and in his dying drop the chains

That held them silent in their watching place.

It was their only bond with him,

This devil that was theirs was also his,

And he was but some hopeful means

To the end they sought,

But as a man he was nothing more

Than a weaponed possibility.

His eyes did not turn to them,

Knowing as he did his place

With all that mattered to their souls.

He did not even look beyond

To where the devil waited, licking lips,

In anticipation of his kill.

He merely breathed and looked within,

Gathering the broken bits,

The maimed flesh of body and of soul,

Mounding it into some able form

That could face the devil down

Despite a night of torture and of pain.

And in that single moment out of time

He occupied the lonely space

Between the devil waiting for his blood

And the silent, watching ones

Who cared neither that he lived or died

But only that he killed.

By Jo Anzalone  1-19-2007

(Again, this is not a poem but only expressed

thoughts on a moment, a single moment, that

somehow caught my eye.)

BACK TO LIBRISCROWE

BACK TO POETRY INDEX