COSMIC VOICES

My daughter reports a bee colony

occupied an interior wall of her

late aunt’s California home. How a bee

whisperer urged them to flee beyond their

vast casacombs, leave honey and larvae,

explore and settle near apple orchards

or melon fields. Surely what they must say

to each other, bees and human, their words

a special language, reveal cosmic voices

we share with our universe, soft sounds heard

far beyond earth – tales of love and choices

we all make to survive. How what occurs

within our cells here must mirror small lives

on our Moon or Mars, where surely love thrives.

Roger Armbrust

January 29, 2020

ENGRAM

It’s horrible, seeing again you leaving,

seeing again your pained blue eyes glaring

at my clueless chant of love, my grieving

later for weeks, self-destruction scaring

me into surviving one more lost time.

Memory surely alters my psyche,

my facial muscles, your absence a crime

of passion like no other. Alters me

through every flexing organ, my skin tone

surely grinding to gray. Neural tissue’s

stunned mauve colonies no longer alone

in their trauma. That last time I kissed you

years ago tears me again, this engram

destroying then renewing our endgame.

Roger Armbrust

January 23, 2020