Ron Riekki- Two Poems

            I Hope I Didn’t Waste My Life on Poems

when I should have wasted my life on God.
Or, not wasted, but Anselmed myself to God.
You see, there I go again, saying the wrong word

at the right time.  I know Basho once said,
“We gaze / at horses / this morn of snow,” and
I don’t know what it means, but it sounds drowned

in perfection.  And I’m an outsider to outsiders, my hand
trembling at the thoughts of my past, my cracked imperfections.  I should
have found God

                                            in everyone,   in everything.

            ♬

They say our pulse
is the percussion section;
our breath,
the woodwinds,
and God conducts
sans baton,
and here is a beat,
and here another,
and there, one more,
and there,
and there,
and now,



Bio: Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works, and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, featuring writing by Bame-wa-wa-ge-zhik-aquay, Lorine Niedecker, Catie Rosemurgy, Beverly Matherne, Sally Brunk, Roxane Gay, Upper Peninsula Poet Laureate Andrea Scarpino, and many more talented U.P. women writers.