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Certain symbols
and other poems
by Michael Meyerhofer

Certain symbols

Surely we would sing aloud
if the president became a
Cherokee medicine man,
if the Secretary of State
were an Egyptian poetess
who went topless with eyes

shining, fierce and lovely
as Sappho, swearing armies
in defense of the weak
and the lustful. Surely
we would send Whitman
like a pastor into classrooms.

Why, then, why
do we feel such trepidation
when the symbol becomes
our own flag, or that tiny
metal figure stapled
onto its wooden cross?

Haven’t we risen each
morning, straining to hear
amid the tangled ghosts
of sleep, the still soft voice
of the heart, the dark earth,
what we’ve called the soul

but mean to be religion?
We, who protest loudest
whenever the separation
of powers becomes blurred—
would we mind
so terribly if Congress

began each session with
ruminations on Zen?
Are we to be hypocrites—
or has this something to do
with what always happens
when a flag becomes

infallible, the symbol
an excuse for ignoring
what was intended? The
first rebels, the first patriots
or renegade Jews meeting
in barns or the forest

surely they were like us:
nothing on which to build
but vague notions
and dreams from some
other place, another land
and time not yet realized.

The end of summer

I almost cry to think of it now—
the summer ending, alone with you
in the backyard,

finishing the bucket of chicken
from KFC which you loved
even though you're a vegetarian now,

the two of us sitting, still a little
in love, I think, holding hands
like the end of a chapter

watching the sundown, the lake,
the birds gathering
to fly somewhere else.

Staying inside

I stayed inside today
but had I gone out
I might have written poems
about blowing leaves
or neighbors running
through sprinklers
or perhaps a line or two
about the cardinal
who landed briefly on
my fence post
then rose and
quietly flew away.

Poem for a woman's hair

A girl with a shy neck
unties her hair,

lets it fall down
down, almost touching

the floor,

then wraps it
through her fingers

and ties it up again.

Michael Meyerhofer's writing has appeared in Chiron Review, Free Lunch, Main Street Rag, Snow Monkey, Verse Libre, Sometimes City, Steel Point Quarterly, Modern Haiku, and others. He's currently working on an MFA at Southern Illinois University where he teaches, drinks too much coffee, and maintains a naïve belief that poetry will save the world.