For My Dad The Mighty Oak
by Diane Jarvis
August 8,1996

Wherin does the life of the mighty oak come?

is it in the majestic power of the full grown tree?

is it in the tiny acorn awaiting to open and spring forth?

is it in hands unseen, moving and fashioning with the elements all around us?

is it in the mighty earth currents rising from the depths?

is it in the delicious nectar from the rainclouds nourishing the soil?

is it in the heavenly sky moving through all and all with the gift of breath,

is it in the warmth of sunlight stimulating activity and growth?

What is this secret paradox, the sphinx that man is
and cannot know what he is, and how, why and wherefore of his existence?

A fledgling God creator in time?
A worm of dust?
A vanishing point into nothingness?
Nothingness that goes where?
Where does time go?

A moment in eternity. A point in space.
Do I believe in God?
Is there a will to good somewhere to be understood?

Something yet to be fully known and grasped?
But like the stars shining above the horizon
Getting a high mark to keep in sight for our destination?

“Influential Variations”
by Diane Jarvis

With every gentle hum of the wind a quiet ripple of dissension vibrates. The walls give silent echoes of discontent rhythms. Rumors in dark grey shadows breed disease, leeching to the depths of suffocated life. Stifling monument, master of suppression, highest deity of death, alarmingly rings of clever frantic laughter that sends bullet shot pangs smashing into my bruised skull. Idled strains of misers music, nervous prancers ever await that never prance away, chains of required boredom drag the rough pavement, grates from smelling hell. Immaculate clean people, dust-ridden inside, giving forth brain dusts from eight to four. Dust storms, it’s a wonder the dust has not sunk from sight this stirring swamp of prison nightmares, suppressing all currents to bring to light the foundations of grey death.

Every song a revolution, casting overboard the hope.
Every squeak a conspiracy, killing the sound.
Every truth not tolerated, crushing the education.
Every student a death, funeral exercises every June, pleased to come,
invitation to death, who wouldn’t come?

Heavy weights of tradition drag the cement into the ground, already six feet down. The past enacted in a present, a comedy farce presented all year round. Memorial of the past lived everyday; times of long ago never lived, passed and forgotten. Experience the madness of actors playing a role for so long, they do not know it. Of a stage set so long, no longer a stage but a school. Of ants crawling around for so long, they are now considered the student body. Of termites taking silent bites, gorging and gorging in self hate, frustration, destruction.

A person I happen to be. I stand alone amid a hellish scene once in my nightmares, not in my dreams. But now my realities of a life I am seemingly living. As I look around.