by Michael Lee Johnson

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Poem dancer,
Russian yellow in revolutionary white snow.
Am I really Yuri Zhivago
Hidden in this funeral procession
Held high by pall bearers, looking at my dead father?
Lifting him up stairs into the Russian Orthodox church?
Only for the sake of snowflakes & the pouring
of aged Vodka on the casket?
Only for the growth of rebellious youth,
the sweet aging of wrath?
Does a somber poet lose his flavor
Of word and dance & turn to medicine-
like children finding meaning
in racing around rooms and mazes
holding hands and losing direction
before their breath stops, the punctuation dies?
Poem dancer Russian yellow in white snow-
50/50 the poet dies alone.

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