"Both" and "Simone"
Both
can live together; heavy clouds
create an opening for sunshine,
the twittering birds fill
the air. But in Hong Kong
the heavy crowds...one million,
are but a moment, their voices
stilled by one person, and behind
her the person who holds
the reins of prison, silence
and acquiescence, but they can't
eliminate history, voices
that were flags, memories
that time cannot obliterate, Tiananmen
Square, the Tank Man,
the Umbrella Movement. Beneath
layers of lies, truth is a tree
that towers above barbed wire.
Simone
carries a whole world within him; the river
of his mother's endearing words that
have their own infinity, even though it has been
two years since her passing, the Adriatic,
a sea of contradictions with oil spills
and garbage, but also the boat of his
dreams large enough for a kitchen, bath
and bedrooms instead of the home
he lost. Corridors stretch inside him where
he and his mother were fishing under
the stars, streets that have no
markings, the smile of the young woman
he loves, the sound of her voice,
the days stretching before him that are
uncertain, some marked by closed
doors. He has yet to learn that to fall
is also to rise again, that within him
flows his loving heart beats,
and there is more in his life than
the pain that time inflicts.
Besides writing books, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard has spent her life volunteering on behalf of social justice. She has been writing to a black prisoner in Lincoln Nebraska, helping him with his poetry, and has published a chapbook of his work called Soul Songs. We need to know that our prisons are filled with mostly black and Latino prisoners, many of whom made only minor offenses. Her new poetry book is Shades of Meaning and she is working on a non-fiction book, Climate Visionaries Around the World. She will have a new poetry book coming out in 2023. Marguerite supports the Mississippi Center for Justice.
