Small towns tell stories of their inhabitants,

those current ones and those

who already have said goodbye to this life.

Indeed, people prefer to be told of those 

who are no longer with us.  

Unlike the big cities, such stories are known for all

and never fall into oblivion.

As if they were plots of soap operas or television series,

always appear followers of this or that character,

who neither know nor suspect they have not died,

continuing to live and giving to the posterity some reason

to unfold uncertain and so ordinary their days.

People don’t forget the one who didn’t listen to parents,

brought his wife from stranger town

and produced three sons and countless betrayals;

also that family whose grandparents were dominant

in society, their sons lost tradition and money,

 grandchildren now live in poverty

and don’t know how to start again;  

that casino and its illusive machines and stripteases,

bad-looking owners and poker tables, boycotted

by the population and set out to look for another place;

the cemetery that needs to be deactivated

and make way for a new and more modern,

what they are putting off, so they continue to rest

and be seen near those they had loved in life.

They realize with sadness the current youth which loses

the meaning and strength of one life well lived,

the smile that was able to open hope and create

their fathers’ generation.

A generation that persecutes daily the happiness 

 in all its fullness we are in the right duty to achieve.

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©

Sharing with friends my poem “The Seaman’s Death”, today, Oct 5 2022, published in the Canadian Literary Review “Ekphrastic Review”. Many thanks to the dear editor Lorette C. Luzajic. Read (and enjoy) it at: https://www.ekphrastic.net/

Sharing with friends the publication, today, Sep 13th 2022, of my five poems – “On War and Love”, “Chronology of the Pleasures”, “Desires”, “Gloomy Days” and “Rewriting Paradise”, in the Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Many thanks to the dear editor Strider Marcus Jones. Read (and enjoy) it at: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2022/09/five-poems-by-edilson-afonso-ferreira.html

Sharing with friends my poem “Another Language”, today published in the August 2022 issue of “The Lake”, highly regarded Literary Journal of London (UK). Many thanks to the dear editor Mr. John Murphy. Read (and, perhaps, enjoy) it at:

http://www.thelakepoetry.co.uk/poetry/edilson-ferreira/

On “Island Funeral”, egg tempera and oil on hardboard, by N. C. Wyeth, 1939.

They were worth a lot, the five years that the painter kept in his  

memory and heart the scene of a maritime funeral procession,

that took place on September 11th 1934, in Teel’s Island.    

It had been a lapse of time in which he honed and trained his brush,

until 1939, enabling the birth of this masterpiece.

In true, like some others, he had not seen, but heard about,

the transport to the island for burial of a 96 years’ lobsterman,

a remarkable event, remembered long afterward.

The man, one that his family was the name of the island,

where he was born and had lived all his entire existence.

In a bird’s eye perspective, both grave and lyric, we see the collision,

also the coexistence of two worlds, the sea the man had much loved

and the mainland with so hard a hillside to be climbed.

The sea was liquid and bright to honor him in this day,

the earth, substance and shadow, ready for his rest.   

This poem and all others at this blog, authored by Edilson Afonso Ferreira ©

Published in The Ekphrastic Review, Oct 05 2022.

http://www.ekphrastic.net

Sharing with friends my poem “Mishaps in Time”, just published in the printed 2022 summer issue of the Literary Journal “WestWard Quarterly”. Many thanks to the dear editor Dr. Richard Leonard.

Sharing with friends the publication, today, of my poem “Chronology of the Pleasures”, in the Literary Review “Sky Island Journal”, its summer 2022 issue. Many thanks to the dear editors Jeff and Jason. Read (and enjoy, I hope) at:

https://www.skyislandjournal.com/issues#/issue-21-summer-2022/

We crossed over deserts, meadows, mountains,

travelled by rivers and seas, Arctics and Antarctics,

planted vines, bridges and ports, raised sheep and sons.   

We built churches, cathedrals, palaces and poor hovels.  

We lit fire into dark nights and hope into sore souls,

 have also made mad things we prefer never to remember.

We threw roads and rails, telegraphs, cities, skyscrapers,

even an audacious tower, at Babel, when, our history tells,  

You promptly restrained us.

Your sons became grandsons, great-grandsons, at last, us,

adoptive sons who every day attempt to remember

what was like one face that it has been said

we had been patterned from.

First published in Whispers, December 04, 2015.

Published in Dead Snakes, February 29, 2016.

Published in West Ward Quarterly, Winter 2017.