Arthur Powers
Small Business Man
- He says it’s for money – they all do.
- Hypocrites, you know, in their small way,
- pretending to be more worldly than they are.
- He works morning, noon, afternoon, far
- into the night – sleeps – the next day
- gets up early in the morning, starts again –
- thinking, solving, creating as he works –
- How can we make this better? How
- to leverage…? What new idea…?
- Next time you pass it on the street –
- Sam’s Pizza, or Lombardy’s Muffler,
- or the Kit Kat Koffee Klatch –
- remember it’s not money you’re passing,
- but a life, a vision, a big shining loved
- irritating cared for goddam dream.
The Bomber Pilot
- He said it was a game
- where you watched little puffs
- of explosion and cheered
- when the train, the bridge,
- the factory powdered into
- a target. You never thought
- of life, he said, cushioned
- high on safety, until one day
- the planes to right and left
- cracked into rockets and
- the buddies you’d beered
- last night snuffed out,
- and suddenly your jet,
- its wasped wings useless,
- plummeted earthward.
Pilgrims
- (2 friends move to England)
- Doing their small part to undo
- what the Mayflower wrought, they sailed
- east across the Atlantic
- and, on July first, landed to
- fight the forest and catch the beast
- (he stalked the rounds of the newspapers;
- she taught.) Standing alone on the strange
- land, they thought the least
- they could do was their small part
- (carving a new world)
- to discover America.
Arthur Powers’s poetry chapbook, Edgewater, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He has also authored The Book of Jotham (Tuscany Press) — winner of the 2012 Tuscany Novella Prize — and A Hero for the People (Press 53) — winner of the 2014 Catholic Arts & Literature Award.