If I could talk about beauty today
I’d talk about whirligig seedpods spiraling down from maple trees
Whose leaves lie yellowed and rusted
Beneath the green canopy that has begun its fatal turn
Anticipating the fall
Or the smell of the forest moments after a rainshower
Evoking distant memories
Walking along the trail
My feet play an arpeggio of crunches
But I’m not listening to that song
My mood is as gray and ponderous as the clouds
Massing like warships off the coast
There is little room for beauty
When the ugliness of war is imminent
When the ugliness of violence is prevalent
And the mean spirits of the convinced
Crush any non-conformist view
With the finality of the fallen
Yet even though I ache with empathy
For the lost and beaten
For long lost spirits vanished in genocidal flames
That is not my truth today
My truth is my own pain
The dull ache of bone regenerating
A scabrous tug of congealed tissues beneath a zippered line
Of reddened welts
Ascending my chest like angry punctuation marks
My truth is stolen by my self-absorption
I isolate chaotic messages of a disrupted nervous system
Comprehending metallic intrusions
Listening to the mechanical insistence of the new valve
Then, drained and enervated I fade
Into somnolence
Unable to maintain the illusion of reality
I slumber unconcernedly
Aware of nothing beyond my next breath
Finding a solitary truth
David Trudel © 2013
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What Is Truth
If I could talk about beauty today
I’d talk about whirligig seedpods spiraling down from maple trees
Whose leaves lie yellowed and rusted
Beneath the green canopy that has begun its fatal turn
Anticipating the fall
Or the smell of the forest moments after a rainshower
Evoking distant memories
Walking along the trail
My feet play an arpeggio of crunches
But I’m not listening to that song
My mood is as gray and ponderous as the clouds
Massing like warships off the coast
There is little room for beauty
When the ugliness of war is imminent
When the ugliness of violence is prevalent
And the mean spirits of the convinced
Crush any non-conformist view
With the finality of the fallen
Yet even though I ache with empathy
For the lost and beaten
For long lost spirits vanished in genocidal flames
That is not my truth today
My truth is my own pain
The dull ache of bone regenerating
A scabrous tug of congealed tissues beneath a zippered line
Of reddened welts
Ascending my chest like angry punctuation marks
My truth is stolen by my self-absorption
I isolate chaotic messages of a disrupted nervous system
Comprehending metallic intrusions
Listening to the mechanical insistence of the new valve
Then, drained and enervated I fade
Into somnolence
Unable to maintain the illusion of reality
I slumber unconcernedly
Aware of nothing beyond my next breath
Finding a solitary truth
David Trudel © 2013
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Filed under Cardiology, Poetry
Tagged as beauty, blank verse, cardiac surgery, cardiology, creative writing, creativity, free verse, healing, inspiration, metaphor, nature of time, post-op recovery, sadness, self-absorption, social commentary, tranquility, truth, universal peace, war