Nolo Segundo

Nolo Segundo is the pen name of a retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] who in his 8th decade became a published poet in over 260 literary journals in 21 countries, was nominated for the Pushcart, thrice for Best of the Net, and has 3 collections published in softcover by Cyberwit.net:  THE ENORMITY OF EXISTENCE; OF ETHER AND EARTH; and SOUL SONGS. These titles reflect awareness gained over 50 years ago when he had an NDE whilst nearly drowning in a Vermont river: that he has—is--a consciousness predating birth and surviving death, what poets since Plato have called the soul. 

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

BABYLAND

My wife and I
went to say hello
to her mother and
put flowers on her
grave
and as it was such
a vivid day shining
like life’s most
poignant dream (you
know, that feeling
you only get in late
autumn as the last
reluctant leaves
finally fall and old
man winter sends
hints of his coming
harsh arrival),
I suggested we go
for a quiet walk
through the large
silent park where
the dead reside in
undemanding patience.

We walked the long paths
of this community of souls,
stopping here and there
to read the grave markers
(and without telling my wife
I would compare their years
against my own, so often
amazed I had more, and
knowing my own youth of
unsweet carelessness, had to
wonder why).

Then we came upon a small
stonewall enclosure, with
a sign at its entrance:
BABYLAND

Within low walls of dead-cold
stone we saw the tiny grave
markers, most with but one
date beneath a name and often
an appellation (‘Little Bo’, ‘Our
Angel’, ‘My Lost Dream’)
though some had two dates,
usually only a few days apart,
sometimes a few months of life
were testified to.

As we left that saddest part of a
very sad place, I said to my wife,
‘It’s good they’re all together,
isn’t it?’
She nodded her head but turned
away so I could not see her eyes….

A Morning’s Walk

My wife and I walk every morning,
a mile or so--
it’s good for us old to walk in the cold,
or in the misty rain, it makes less the pain
that old age is wont to bring to bodies
which once burned bright with youth,
though now I wear braces on ankles,
braces on knees, and I walk slowly
with 2 canes, like an old skier,
sans snow, sans mountain.

We passed a tree whose leaves had
left behind summer’s green and now
fall slowly, carefully one by one
in their autumnal splendor.

My wife stopped me--
listen she said-- but
I heard nothing—hush!,
stand still, she said,
and I tried hard to
hear the mystery….

Finally I asked her, knowing my hearing
less than my wife’s (too many rock concerts
in my heedless youth), what we listen for?

She looked up at my old head, and smiled--
only she could hear the sound each leaf made
as it rippled the air in falling to the ground.