Wednesday Poems: This is the poem

Wednesday, like any day, is the perfect day for poetry. This week's poem is a poem about a poem.


This is the poem

that stumbles over itself
falling at odd intervals into oblivion

It is not
trendy or clever or fierce
It is not much more
than a puff of smoke
from a cigarette

It needs an image
that holds allure--
the left ear of a cat, say
or the crannies in an English muffin--
something it could use
to jump into a universal truism
about love and justice and death

It has no purpose
and the passion which fueled it into being
has been spent,
leaving it with nothing,
a coin in a beggar's pocket--
small change that won't change
anything.

The repository of voices unsung
is populated by poems
like this one

whatever it was they once wanted to say
is nothing more than the echo
of water splashing
in the bottom of a well.

Wednesday Poem: Desert Rose

It's Wednesday again, time for some poetry. Why? Because Wednesday, like all days, is a great day to wax poetic


This poem was inspired, as the name suggests, by my first encounter with desert roses. Desert roses aren't flowers, they are crystal clusters of gypsum and sand. They form in arid conditions, often as the result of salt water evaporation

 

Sandroses photo by Sven Teschke. For more information on this image, please visit Wikimedia

Desert Rose

Emblem of scarce water, you are born
of evaporation and brittle ground,
the child of lack

Bloom of gypsum,
buds of sand,
your garden is corralled by mesas

Ball of string, will you unravel
when rain pours into the arroyo?

Wednesday Poems: Ain't I a Woman

Wednesday, like all days, is a good day for poetry.

This week's poem is one I wrote while listening to Edda James singing the blues.

Ain't I a Woman

Singing a woman's song
in a strong soft voice
that travels limb to limb
and says "leave your worn body here"

Ain't I a Woman, after all
who can flash you an eye
and call your name to the moon?
And the the moon gives a shine,
her fullness illuminating better than any old star.

The moon will tell you true;
 I got shoulders sweeter than honeysuckle
for you to lay your head,
I got arms that spread like the tide
like joy

The moon will tell you
'cause ain't she a woman too? 

Wednesday Poems : Paradelle at Mill Pond

I began my writing life as a poet and as a result, I have a lot of poems. A lot. A whole real lot. So, for a while, I thought I might post some of them here in a new blog I'm calling Wednesday Poems. Because today is Wednesday. And Wednesday, like all days, is a great day for poetry.
This week, I'm posting a paradelle. This is, in fact, the only paradelle I've ever written. It's a form-poem in which the first and second lines are repeated, then the third and fourth lines take the exact words from the first four lines and reorder them. In the last stanza, all the words are reordered.
Paradelle is, to my mind, the most difficult form I've come across. Which may explain why I've only ever written one. Paradelle at Mill Pond is a study, looking to the water after a stone has been cast.

Paradelle at Mill Pond 

A stone tumbled from my careless hand
A stone tumbled from my careless hand
Cast ripples to bend the wavering maples
Cast ripples to bend the wavering maples
My wavering hand cast ripples to bend a stone
tumbled from the careless maples

Even swallows that carry sun
Even swallow that carry sun
Across narrow wings turned to blur
Across narrow wings turned to blur
Carry that narrow sun turned to blur
across the swallow's even wings

Folded leaves floated like rocking boats
Folded leaves floated like rocking boats
In the shallow water
In the shallow water
Shallow boats in the folded water
floated like rocking leaves

Even a cast stone turned to blur
folded wings floated across my rocking hand
swallows tumbled from narrow leaves
like careless boats that carry sun ripples
to bend the shallow maples
in the wavering water

Happy Father's Day

 

Those Winter Sundays

By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

A-Z Writing Challenge: Z

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Z is for Zenith

Zenith

she

knew she was

no more

than a touch a

rustle

ushering a wind-

chime a hush

or

the ephemeral

whisper of

God

A-Z Challenge: Y

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Y is for Yellow

Yellow

Yellow is daffodil,

daisy eye

dandelions picked

in childhood spring.

Yellow is forsethia

and tall rags of golden rod.

Yellow is the sallow skin of age,

parchment worn diaphanous,

old words on paper

left to dry inside of books.

Yellow is the paint of kitchens

warm with baking bread.

Yellow is midday sun,

yoke centered in albumen.

Primary strong and soft,

it mixes with the blue sky

to become green

like grass

like hope.

A-Z Challenge: X

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X is for X Marks the Spot

X Marks the Spot

where my heart fell into the pond.

It must have been a week ago,

I can't be sure.

But no, it wasn't X but O

that marked the spot it fell.

The water grew in rings

concentric circles, like time.

And no, don't worry

a heart can't drown.

Hearts are born of water and so

even from the stony depths below

they sing

And, always, they return you know.

A-Z Blogging Challenge: W

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W is for White Birches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

White Birches

Two birch trees

danced

by the lake

Trunk dappled

in the fading

light

Slender stalks

bent over

one another

The leaves of one

sheltering 

the other

They flickered

in water

reflected

Like two

lovers well

satistied

A-Z Blogging Challenge: V

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V is for Van Gogh

Sunflowers Vincent Van Gogh

When Van Gogh Dreamt

he saw fields full of sunflowers nod

their patient heads like cows that huddled under the broad

leaves.He noticed how the softest of gusts

would comb over turned manes.

It was summer
and the world fell under the spell of drenching heat

that swirled the stars dancing over dark and fallow fields.

It was summer,

and clouds cast in silver filled spaces.

Cowbells echoed into heat-cured pastures and hay was gathered

by callused sun-worn hands.

It was summer

and the sunflowers bowed complacent in an earthenware

vase. The air was heavy with rain

as he gathered his tools and made the canvas

into a net in which to catch

elusive yellow the moment before it

falls.

A-Z Blogging Challenge: U

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U is for Understand

Understand

one

Oil and blood

fill the canvas.

How you have

stroked the days

into being.

two

The heart

is a white flower.

Its center

is yellow as sun.

It keeps

losing petals.

three

Don't ask which question

will stick to the dark

silk of your dreams.

Don't ask which answer

will slide

under your door

come morning.

four

The winter moon 

is full,

the shadow of continents

reflected on the uneven

surface.

Here is another reason

to hold blue

in your arms.

A-Z Challenge: T

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T is for Town

In a Town with No Name

The junkyard, the graveyard

truck bodies rusting in the sun.

At the diner coffee comes in chipped mugs--

warms the chill bone rattlings

Tomato soup and meatloaf,

Wednesday again.

Stones thrown at factory windows

until the last shards sprinkle

dirty snow.

In line at the corner market,

dollar crumpled in your fist--

this time you'll come back

cash in the ticket

leave it all behind you.

A-Z Challenge: S

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S is for Sculptor

The Sculptor's Last Angel

His calloused hand caressed the scrolling lines

Veined in the bone white marble of her tomb.

His patient chisel, practiced at the task,

Sought out the cloistered form that stone confines

And holds imprisoned in its pregnant womb.

He rendered from a stubborn milky mask

A poignant angel by his soul conceived,

Celestial angel to himself bequeathed.

His last breath given out for her to own,

Lies beckoning inside her tender breast.

Her ardent eyes seize from the marble stone

A heart that's long been buried in its chest.

Her wings await his final passage home

From this damp bed where he must take his rest.

A-Z Challenge: R

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R is for Raspberry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raspberry

Little hut of circles,

a nest 

for the tongue

a thimble of juice

delicate

as a summer morning.

Ripe on the brier,

a red promise

Summer igloo

in the hot iron sun.

Pebble of seed

gathered under flesh,

soft thatch of roof

Elusive melody

in the thorn bush,

a chorus repeated

year after year,

a sotto voce note

that hangs

momentarily

in August's mouth.

A-Z Challenge: Q is for Question

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Q is for Questions

Questions

I ask the world.

She answers in parables of rust

and empty branches.

She answers with the scent of fallen

leaves and the musk of earth,

turning over in a last fidget

before sleep under a white blanket.

She will dream her way back

to the dawning sun, to the place

where my skin and your skin is set

to flame. She will dream her way back

to leaf buds opening tender mouths

to early rain.

She will find me here, still asking

hollow questions that echo

through the mountain narrows.

The questions that keep piling

like leaves spent in flame.

She will answer

with a warm dancing wind that

rakes the sky's reflection

in the pond's watery eye.

She will answer with the light at dawn,

the sound of thrush and lark,

the smell of new grace.

In the fire silence of the hour,

she will answer with cirrus clouds

inked on the new opened canvas

of sky.

A-Z Challenge: P

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P is for Pemequid

Pemequid at Dusk

The water grows mellow in this light,

invites the azure sky to float.

Birds stop their whistle and perch

over the flame lips of the bay--

the sun dripping body and blood

onto the tongue

Somewhere a city lights artificial stars

and night roars in, a lion with meat in its maw.

Here, a wide swath of heaven is unbolted,

flames darken and the moon blooms

in their ash. Night is soft as eiderdown.

Somewhere neon blinks and ravages sleep.

Here the laughing Pleides hold hands

and frame eternity in the timeless sky

as night tucks water under her garment--

deep and black and patient,

the wind singing from her mouth.

A-Z Challenge: O

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O is for Ocean:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Ocean Beach at Five AM

The slap of morning

is a cold pool

I hunger

for the sweet sanctuary

of my dreams

On the beach

a multitude of seabirds

hallowed in purple haze

gather on the protruding rocks

guarding the tides

Suddenly

the eastern sky

awakens in a ball of fire

a heavenly host

communion

A-Z Challenge: N

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N is for Nighthawks

Nighthawks

after Edward Hopper

The big picture window of Phillie's diner

is a yellow welcome climbing out of shadow,

an island in the dream of three am,

swimming out through deep grates and lattice work.

Phil is working the counter in a white uniform,

old as the place and polite as you please.

You perch on the stool in a bright red dress,

your man sitting next to you.

His fedora catches light on the brim.

Its three am and you in your straight-seamed nylons

and he in dress coat and tie

hum late night conversation,

words warm as coffee,

inside the plateglass. And beyond,

the lip of darkness pouts in shadows.

This is the way it was,

a world liquid under glass,

while the avenue was dark with stars 

A-Z Challenge: M

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M is for Margaret

Margaret and Lou

1

They lived for forty years

in a big house

with paint peeling from the clapboards

They lived downstairs

in six rooms.

Just the two of them alone

in six rooms with

National Geographics from before

the second world war.

a statue of the virgin

five votive candles

and faded plastic geraniums

2

Once they cruised

coast to coast

in a brown Plymouth.

They came home

to six rooms

with Kodacrome slides

and souvenir spoons

from each stop

along the highway.

3

The sign out front says

house for sale.

As is. Bank owned. 

 

A-Z Challenge: L

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L is for Light

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light at Eventide

Soft and forgiving,

it loves the boats

floating in the estuary.

They would stay without

anchorage.

Acceptance is

smooth as glass,

a shelter palpable and touchable.

The light calls for rest.

Like vespers, it sings:

You have dashed against the rocks,

been rung out on the stones.

In this hour I will carry you

like a mother.

I will shelter you

when darkness settles.