First Word

What wondrous dawning, this newfound life
Heavy the heaving, blank, unchanging child
Cradled as this world changes and I, too, must change
 
The Bible’s first words, first pages, the very beginning
Hover like a berry on the tongue of Adam
Words from a poem long lost to the children

But then a voice drones on from depths unknown

Confessed, it hums the truth from swift, beating wings
It dwells in waves  that  crest above,  in wreaths of flame

Where I, caught in airs of foul notions and intentions

Above a stark and pure re-creation of the world,
become eternity, vast beyond what eyes can see

-D. LaRocco, 2006

"Every existence in nature, every existence in the human world, every cultural work that we create, is something which was given, or is being given to us, relatively speaking.  But as everything is originally one, we are, in actuality, giving out everything.  Moment after moment, we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life."

- Shunryu Suzuki

The Soul Miners

With calls and clamor, man erects the rig
He stokes the flames with Earth's blackened blood
To raise and turn his augers, forged to dig
Through fields and flats of salt and icy mud
At dusk, the workers walk the barren soil
Like ghouls between the gates of life and death
With onyx eyes they reap their endless toil
With Labor's lust they draw their dusty breath
But as the drills do spit the rocky heart
They've dredged from out the world's unmoving soul
Within each captive's most essential part
The steel of Progress carves a harrowed hole
To bring Destruction's manifested strife
From slumbering mistress to waking wife

-D. LaRocco, 2013