Flying Island

            In Memoriam for Elie Wiesel Slowly the minister read a description of hell, an exercise, he said, in the reach of God, his realm. It was not the squalid grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch nor Cotton Mather’s flame and ash nor even Dante’s cruelly calibrated fosse. It was a child thrashing at the end of a rope his hollow, sallow frame too slight to quit the agony of Auschwitz. Minutes passed. More. An anguished voice cried from the yard Where is God? Where is God? God is here. Later, after bacon and eggs, I leafed quickly past the inked accounts of barrel bombs of bruised and battered children and the wretched petty deaths of local homicides until at last I reached the crossword puzzle and did not weep.     Martin DeAgostino is a late-life convert to poetry whose only defense is that he got there as soon as he could. He lives in Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis.

    Sweep Except for a heron I was alone at the river The water rippled like crumpled foil shiny and bright I shuffled a little watching the heron watching the river A small wake formed a V around its long still legs Ceaseless, insistent it made me think of the sweep and current of history its turns and eddies I saw Caesars vying for power drone strikes and keening women I saw the violence of men toward women I saw all of those things but the heron saw none It knew only the river braided and flowing that joins another that joins another that joins one more that runs to the sea Martin DeAgostino is a Midwest native who has lived in Indianapolis for 20 years, reading much and writing a little. It's been a good way to live.