Hada wins Oklahoma Book Award. the adanews

When first light calms blue-swept night
and cool dawn erases
yesterday’s heat.

Morning reminds us that night
is a fragment, and summer
swelter is brief.

Blue flowers color the day
in dew-filled grass. We find
ourselves in song.

We are made for the morning.
Starting over is something
we should get right.

from Sunlight & Cedar (2020)

How can I eulogize
those I do not know

faces on the news?

The border of my youth
rearranged,
by evil fools,
championed by deranged
citizens
who willfully misremember
their own family history
of migration.

How do I grieve
for children now orphaned,
for children now dead
when neighbors applaud death
as if it’s a good god’s will?

Such events should force us
to our knees in the fiery desert dust,
should remind us of Charleston
and Dayton and Charlottesville
and everywhere else
humanity is murdered,
and Hope is intimidated.

Yes, even Auschwitz.

At the very least
I should give a damn,
try out something called empathy.

It’s not much
but isn’t that the point?

When temperatures reach
the century mark, humidity
pounding as a relentless hammer
slung by a deranged fool

I find myself thinking of juncos,
those furtive winter birds
flocked in fields of memory
foraging for dear life.

I remind myself that seasons
change, and each epoch
presents unique burdens,
life that calls us to rise

above the day-to-day strife
to endure with song
despite death threats embraced,
enabled, by the complacent

those heralds looking backward
to a time when grace
was not possible, when liberty
was unimaginable

a mere dream that finally formed
America – imperfect – yet
in process, a hopeful hymn
sung in opposition to hate

by common folk, stellar
creatures who detest corruption,
who have sense enough
to resist the extremes

conjured by fear, diluted
with false patriotism
and a reckless abandonment
of anything decent.

flashes through trembling sky
across a horizon I can never outgrow

feeble clouds mark
its path – fire of heaven
skirting the rim of earth

and I, on this sandy knoll,
look out with wonder
like the child
I always must be

https://issuu.com/ovac/docs/af-winter2018.web/24

for Mark Cronk

Find rhythm in winter:
Lean into brumal wind,
long afternoon shadows.
Doze in early darkness
after a cup of warm cider,
cigar and candle light –
a symphony you’ve been

meaning to really hear.
Wake to austere and distant
sun on brown grass covered
with frost, ageless cedars
with graying blue berries,
bare limbs of cottonwoods,
an owl perched high above

stubborn leaves tan and torn
but clinging to the oaks,
low-flying geese, crows.
Solitude, books, melodies
around you, inside you,
stories half-remembered
coming into focus, old

friends, familial gossip.
Forget the chores. Think
of nothing but what comes
to you, passes through you.
Pray to those gone before,
for the overcharged or falsely
accused. Pray for peace.

Escape hype that consumes.
Become a dream. Be
nothing but dry leaves piled
on the path to your heart.
Don’t fret the loss of color.
It’s only a matter of light –
a flickering flame.

Ken Hada
12/16/17

The end of symbolism comes:
not metaphor but actual
real-life, khaki-wearing boys
self-driven to hate.

Afraid to admit how good
they’ve got it, greedy lust
consumes them. They won’t
rest until blood is spilled.

Hate should be America’s
last resort, but it’s big business.
Fools fondling flags embody
the fake news they decry.

Spleening excretion,
they’re tools of the mega-rich
who sniff, avert eyes
belied above it all.

The literal now has come
and brazenly chants
the monotone of death –
one dimension under (their) god

I’ll stand with the owls.
Every evening they call darkness
as sure as cloudy skies
closer than stars.

They know what they’re doing.
I envy their constancy,
their sheer belief
in the way things ought to be.

Sometimes their calls
are soft, subtle.
Sometimes they are not
but always abrupt

they bring me back
to sanity, to routine
to the goodness
God built into them.

The owls, the trees,
the darkness – this
is what matters.
This is where truth begins.