Poetry
A Black Hole
by Barn Brand
I am among the resurrected
I was dead
No, not deeply depressed
Dead
Stainless steel coffin dead
Trapped in a sealed tube with panic the only dimension
I revisited all my public failures
All the times I disappointed
My self-worth sinking rapidly lower than the coffin
When the force of flagellation was finally confined by the walls of my coffin,
I started counting the small victories
The halo moments
Even the least of them pumped me up freed me to feel
The love of my grandmother’s hug
The tenderness of my wife’s caress
But still wobbling
Was I an emotional voyeur of my life or a journeyman carpenter repairing the broken me?
Had I been working through my life in a blink of an eye – the last currents of thought connecting my synapses?
Had I been stumbling for months, for centuries asking
Is my life scorable?
Are there reliable metrics that can quantify me?
Can I tolerate the cracking of my Isolation being broken by metal slicing through dirt?
Metal meeting the power of the coffin
Muffled voices – fearful yet joyous
Lifted up, I centered Myself on soft grass
I circled down, and fought my way back up, the threaded cone of a black hole
About the Poet
Barn Brand has been working at poetry since he was 12 years old. He is now 77, and he believes that his stuff has evolved to the point that it is ready to find an audience. For 27 years, he was the CEO of the largest community-based ambulatory healthcare agency in New Jersey. He rides his bicycle 4,500 miles a year – for him it is a pure therapeutic experience; riding just cleans out all the garbage from his head.
