Oddball Magazine will be publishing ongoing tributes to José Gouveia to in the hopes of raising awareness of the Joe Gouveia Recovery Fund, an effort to help offset the costs of the poet’s upcoming cancer surgery.

 

Inviolable

You have made your life, our life, green.

You chose to plant, did not accept a fallow field
and you did not gawk backward to the seed,
nor to the germination or the sprout,

only forward toward a verdant surge –

over thousands of days resilience waxes,
wanes, only to wax again –

despite winter; despite dormancy

you emerge, more beautifully,
more courageously,

and we, in the shadow of your liveliness,
crawl from our hermitage,
unfurl our own color

prompted by your splendor
encouraged by your sacred drive.

Namaste. We bow to your divinity.

 

Rene Schwiesow is co-host for the South Shore Poetry venue The Art of Words. In Spring of 2013, she accepted the position of managing editor for Ibbetson Street. She is working on a manuscript slated for a late 2014 publication date by Červená Barva Press.

Oddball Magazine will be publishing ongoing tributes to José Gouveia to in the hopes of raising awareness of the Joe Gouveia Recovery Fund, an effort to help offset the costs of the poet’s upcoming cancer surgery.