Dark Air
Dark Air (After Chika Sagawa) Sunlight skipping through the garden doesn’t always dispel cold shade. Still legs rest on a warm stone bench, half-forgetting the whip of running through meadow grass. Continue reading Dark Air
Category: My Poetry
Morning Meditation: Quiet
On a beautiful summer day when the humidity gives us a break, I walk the dog through my (relatively) quiet neighborhood, craving the different quiet of the deep woods, the real soul quiet where the only noise is the muffled flutterings of little birds, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, and my solitary footsteps on the forest floor. Continue reading Morning Meditation: Quiet
Tourbillion
What are ashes but the left-behinds, the fading static, the doppelgänger of used-to-be. Yet. Born of the earth but not earth-bound, rising light as air into the jet stream, hitching a ride to forevermore. Continue reading Tourbillion
Live Luscious
I always chop the olives by hand. I like a rough chop that says someone still cares about the preparation of food instead of settling for little identically square bits popped out by a steel thing attached to a cord that gives it life. The knife and I give new life to these olives; messy, uneven life such as it is. The earthy texture of the black and the pungency of the green will soon mix with onion, pimento and the special piquant of a home-canned Gardiniera. Aaron Neville croons “Tell It Like It Is” in my ear as I … Continue reading Live Luscious
Grief the Invader
The humidity outside has lifted, settling in my chest. I cannot take a deep breath for the grief circulating around my lungs, slowly slogging inside my body. My blood feels thick, sticky in my veins, wanting to lie still. How easy it would be to wallow in this misery, to allow the body to fade. It doesn’t feel like mine. *** Dont worry. I’m ok. Today is the fourth anniversay of my mothers death plus it’s been three days of almost constant exposure to details of the mass shooting. I was feeling overwhelmed and needed to get it out. Thanks … Continue reading Grief the Invader
Another Day in the Crescent City
It’s another balmy day in paradise. I push down the plunger in the French Press, inhaling the earthy aroma of the blackest of coffees called Community. The morning paper lies on the coffee table waiting for its unfolding, opening and adjusting shake. “Sneaking Sally Through The Alley” is dancing out of the Boze, WWOZ accommodating its listeners with the best music in the country, bar none. Noise from the street wafts through the open French doors: the rummmm-rummmm of the city bus, the high-pitched laughter of kids on Christmas break, the artificially cheerful greeting of “order when you’re ready!” … Continue reading Another Day in the Crescent City
Why It Must Come
“…poetry isn’t revolution but a way of knowing why it must come.” —Adrienne Rich, “Dreamwood” Why It Must Come (After Adrienne Rich) The one great choice is made instinctively, there is no manual no set of directions. The hand-me-down desk has no typewriter or even a pen and paper. The poet needs none of it. Possibilities birth in the brain, its crevices filled with currents and hot-air balloons flying with ideas. The poem is the possibility of a myriad of choices. To create the poem is the one great choice. ***** So it’s the last day of National Poetry Month … Continue reading Why It Must Come
Bodies of a More Complicated Nature
The small parallelipipeds traversed on the hairs of leaves, its casual adventitious body roughening the surface while a hundred armed mites rang’d, breaking one another’s necks. Smutty daubings, engraved by furrows and holes, are viewed as curious writing. Light and shadows are watched through the microscope where the least spot is as big as the Earth itself. ***** Today’s prompt courtesy of Beth Ayer on Found Poetry Review: “In the spirit of heading into darkness after all things unseeable and obscure, write a poem using a text that is inexplicable to you. Could be quantum physics, thermodynamics, mathematics, aeronautical engineering … Continue reading Bodies of a More Complicated Nature
They Were All There, Gleaming
Without him, a faint image became clearer. The curtain hanging before my eyes, flat and cold, removed. Over me, the jeweled colors appear brighter than they were. ***** So, I worked my own prompt today, my version of an erasure poem. Erasure poems, to me, are too messy – you know, all that black marker. So I just take a block of text and search for words and phrases and either underline or write them down as I go. This poem was derived from the following paragraph in The Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (Penguin Books, 1999) … Continue reading They Were All There, Gleaming
Of Little Hands and Feet
What wasn’t: Deliverance Baptismal Secular Miracle A Happy Childhood A Drowning Scene What was: A Burning Resuscitation Conversion A Sanctuary The Other Side of Drowning ***** Prompt courtesy of Greg Santos on Found Poetry Review. Greg suggested several prompts and I settled on a Table of Contents poem which ended up a list poem. My source: The Chronology of Water, Yuknavich, Lidia, Hawthorne Books, 2011. Btw, this is an astounding book. I wrote about it here Continue reading Of Little Hands and Feet
