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Musings

Poetry Index

Out of My Skin
Monarch
A Matter of Scale

Heat Wave
Poet and Pet
Awakening
Rebirth

A Reasonable Life

Snapshots 2006
Haikus
Hush and Listen
Faces
Lizard Thoughts
Thunder
White Rose
Mother of the World
Finally

Poems 2005 —
Passion & Discontent
Absence
Blind
Dance
Dry
The Wake of Disaster

Evening
Mama's Tears
Nude
Old Furniture
Pertoglyphs

Rest
Saved
Sounds of an Empty Promise
Entertainment
Sycamores
Three Quarters
Vientos del Mediterráneo
Weavings

Battle
Giving In

Poems 2004
The Dissappearance of Lao Tsu
Nameless Beauty
Commuting
Memory Game
Every Little Thing Counts
Landscapes of Yo Yo Ma's Brazil
Miles (to Miles Davis)
The Colors of Piazzolla's Tango

War and Peace
Making Friends
Old Glory
Kabul Update
Take Heart
March Madness

Poems 2003
Johnny Cash
Between Heartbeats
"Naked Poetry"
Sunflower Sonnet No. 1.5

New York City
My NYC is not your NYC
SanitationWorker, NYC
Gentrification
Passing By
Belly-button Renaissance
West Chelsea

Poems 2002
Crisis
Finding Each Other
Kindred Spirits
Meteor
To Our Youth
At Sunset
Questions
Hollyhock
Holland in Winter

On Society
Mirrors
McKinney X-Tex
Lady Liberty
Making Friends
Old Glory
Walking

Life's Lessons
Child's Life
Crashing Surf
In Search of the Unknown
Love at First Sight
Holding Hands
Grandpa's Tools

Musings
First Snow
Impressionism
Anonymous
Downcast Eyes
Sagrada Familia

In France
French Gardens
Air Show
Cell Phones 01-04

Churches
Lovers in the Castle


 

 

La Sagrada Familia
(Barcelona, Spain)

The old man
a gray, dark grandfather
looking silently
from the park bench.

Black beret
hands folded in his lap
day after day
in the same spot
sitting in the shadow
of the rising cathedral.

Stone by stone
for seventy-five years
the cathedral rose
not gothic and stern
but human, natural.

The towers
where earth strives
for heaven
wind like growing vines,
an earthy home
where animals
and creatures
of all species
have replaced
the frowning saints.

This man,
this cathedral,
unfinished,
bridge the centuries.
The Sacred Family
a place of worship
of holy nature.

It is the image
central to his life
the one event,
incomplete,
that framed his existence
since the day he swept
the atelier
of the stone cutters
at age seven.

As a youthful apprentice
cutting stone for a daily
piece of bread,
working on the foundation
never imagining the towers
never seeing the plan.

Stone by stone
day by day
workers born
and died
never worshiping
in the cathedral.

This gray man
too old now
to lift a hammer and a chisel
watches from his bench
in the park
across the street
alone.

This unfinished temple of nature
which was his life experience
never seeing its meaning
only seeing the square and level
of the individual block he carved
obeying the directives
of the master
for a little bread and wine
each day.

 

© 2001 Richard Sidy

 

 

 

 

 

© 2002 SNS Press
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