the poetry of Charles Fry

22 February 1997

the stranger

Prisons are very dark I am sure
and very foreboding.
Especially the deepest underground chambers
where a sane man could cry at the top of his lungs
and perhaps a little dirt would crumble from the stone walls
that his hands were tearing into.
Where he could fast for forty days
with out one interruption by visiting angels.

O that I were the captain of my soul.

The feeble trembling of my body
distracts my eyes and twists my mind.
My hand I carefully lift to comfort myself
only to watch it again despair
and this time as it breaks against the ground
my heart does also.

If I were the seashore then I would pick you up
and hold you tighter than the world between my arms.

Copyright © 1997 Charles Fry