This is my 539th poem
According to estimates
Made by unreliable sources
What was not figured in
Were the many poems discarded
Or discounted along the course
Of a life whose discernment
Has often been skewed,
Along with a hundred or more
Burned up intentionally
In a northern Idaho wood stove
Cold cold winter of 1979
Still, that amounts to about 10 poems
for every year of my chronological life on earth
Each one a miracle and blessing
Each one a multi-faceted gem
Each one a broken-hearted, love-lost confession
Each one represents the cost of life until then
Each one sounds a note of suffering
Each one born of a frightful dream
Each one another loss another gain in green fields
Each one turning and tossed like an insomniac's vision
Each one bearing its cross and shame
All tallied amounts to just about everything
But who's counting?
In the end the ashes of all these poems
Will blend with the earth in the infinite
Disintegration of all matter where nothing gained
Equals nothing lost and we all stand
A band of bedraggled and broken angels
Before the throne on Judgement day
Shimmering in our lonesome bodies
Quivering at the sound of impending
Jurisprudence we shall float above ground
Circling in the dance of fireflies lost in mating rituals
Only now we'll be cast off enlightened in eternal flight
Phillip Michael Sawatzky
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/539th-poem-hope/
