Archive for January 2015

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At Night

January 12, 2015

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At Night

So, I breathe your chest
the way the Moon breathes
the Sun’s skin, inhaling
one half of the month, exhaling
the rest.

So, I rest upon your breath
the way the Earth rests
in the path of the Moon,
nearly centered.

**************************************

Here’s another poem that came from the springboard of the prompt of Grace (Everyday Amazing)  on With Real Toads on David Huerta, a Mexican poet.  I am probably linking to With Real Toads Tuesday open forum.  All rights reserved (as always) in drawing and poem. (Yes, I know it’s not much of an elephant!)  

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 32 Comments

An Older Lady Walking Out In The Teens (Farenheit)

January 11, 2015

 

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An Older Lady Walking Out In The Teens (Farenheit)

Sun masks the cold, sort of.
I think, as I walk out, of a thin blanket
thrown over an elephant in a living room–
you are sure something looms, but can’t quite make out
its toes.

Or maybe the toes are all you’d see–
maybe, in fact, the toes would be all that actually sticks out
from under
that blanket.

All I know is that I keep stepping through the tracks
of feet out here–
the sewing machine stitch of mice (the seams running straight
into our house’s foundation),
the tricorne sloop
of a hare,
the deeper divide of hooves,
and up the snow-blazed hill, the beaded cicatrice
of vole tunnel.

But I am tracking youth and vigor
and so trek slowly down a ravine where only snips
of the sun’s thin blanket (and me) slip
through the firs, and wonder, once I’ve slid down,
how to cross the small stream, how to ford
the ice-rivered gush, whether–even if I manage to edge farther
along the steep–I’ll find a possible pass,
when I notice the imprint of paws marking a path
over the snow-crowded stones
and follow with clumsy boots
the way chosen
by the animal.

Though these are big prints, the cluster of some being distinctly
carnivorous–so even as I follow,
a part of me longs
to turn back, and I hold tightly
to the large stick I use to stake my passage–
happy in its sharp point, its snub wooden muzzle–

The sun blinks both eyes
when I get to field again,
a there where almost any step will do–
and yet I find myself following the tracks still,
those paws whose imprint looks both like a heart
and a brain, a small hive, a huge
berry–

wanting not to see the creature
and yet also to spot him–
How is it that we so crave connection
with the wild–we with our cold-toed boots
and our elephants in
the living room–

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A draftish poem for Poetry Pantry on Poets’ United.  Note that the pics above are of tracks, but not a close-up of the paw print.  Below are some pics of the tunnels of animals under the snow, and also a bigger stream than the one I crossed–but you get the idea re the freeze–and elephants!  (The fabric a beautiful gift from a family member who kindly brought it for me from a military tour in Afghanistan.)  (All photos are mine, all rights reserved.) 

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Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Prayer (After David Huerta’s Poem of the Same Name)

January 10, 2015

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Prayer  (After David Huerta’s Poem of the Same Name)

Lord,
save this moment.

It opened as if we two were feet
in a coupled walk, bits
of a walked beach–tide, ebb,
sand, wave;
as if our mouths might have sparked the light
of a leading moon–

It began as if beings who are sand and wave met only
in a frisson of foam, a bubbling
of rainbow,
which sounds
so stupid now—

as if waves didn’t crash,
as if sand didn’t flatten harder
than houses,
as if feet could not be buried
in an instant, buried again.

It opened as if we could not be weighted down
then tossed around;
as if neither of us could be drowned
by what spewed from our own throats;
as if we were known to emit waves
of soft sound only, and as if
a moment, any grain of time’s sand,
could withstand
our onslaught–

Lord, who even in this crush
knows found quiet,
who breathes
like the stars in this night
wider than ocean,
stars too far to care
for a glow going out,
and yet lend theirs–

Lord,
save this moment.

********************************

This is very much a draft poem and not about any particular current incident, but I’m sure we all know about moments gone sour!  It was written for Grace’s (Heaven’s) prompt on With Real Toads to write something in the style of David Huerta, a truly wonderful Mexican poet.  My title and first line are taken from Huerta.   

PS –this has been edited since first posting, as I think I was not very clear in the first version, seen by the first six or seven commenters.  (It’s still probably not very clear, but that may be okay.)  

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 24 Comments

Prompt – That First Vehicle That Gave You Freedom

January 9, 2015

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Prompt – That First Vehicle That Gave You Freedom

Sometimes I feel like I never really got away ever.
Someone else has steered the wheel
the whole damn time and I don’t mean
God.
Even though I know the rules
of the road, passed
my drivers’ test.
Even though they–the great big capitalized
They–issued me some kind
of license.

Sometimes, the driver’s a nice person,
if only she wouldn’t constantly look out the window
and yammer,
but sometimes she’s mean as hell, riding
people’s bumpers, scooting by
on the wrong frigging side– then–
just when they get back to their toodle,
slamming (bam) the brakes
with a vagrant squeal
that sounds almost like road kill,
but the one she’s got her gimlet on
sits just there–you know–
in the frozen squash of the vinyl,
not knowing how
to ditch that ride,
hitch another, way too afraid
to open the door even if
she would slow.

But then, sometimes
of a sudden, long and lost,
the car will wander into the desert,
its chrome burnished orange
by buttes that store sunset,
or it will glide by the side
of a sea held level in its glass,
or it will simply lose itself
in the long pitch of horizon
and that bitch of a driver will go
completely away
and yet the car–the car–
will stick right to the road,
moving on.

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A poem of sorts (yes, a draft poem) for Herotomost’s prompt on With Real Toads  – “Road Trip,” to write about the first real vehicle that gave you freedom.  (This has been slightly edited since first posting and first comments.)

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 14 Comments

January 7, 2015 (Thinking of Paris)

January 8, 2015

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January 7, 2015 (Thinking of Paris)

A mind that will shoot a cartoonist
for drawing a picture
will shoot a young girl
for picking up
a pen.

This is not a matter of lines being drawn,
but of the drawing of pen
or gun. `

We must be brave
on behalf of
the pens.

*********************

A poem of sorts for the terrible massacre of the cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo and (not to sound pompous) for all those who fight for the right to be educated.

Categories: news, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 6 Comments

Frost Reversals

January 8, 2015

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Frost Reversals

I walk on a scattering of clouds.
Trees, in the absence of birds, chirp,
while, in the absence of leaves,
something small, brown, and seemingly
windblown, whisks just above the frozen ground,
till, catching a rutted stump,
it shows one beetle-bright eye, grey
snow scarf.
My thumbs in their solitary sleeves of mitten
beg to cede their opposition
to all other digits, to join
the flock.
Only the stump stays stalwartly itself,
still, frost-bitten.

****************************

Another little poem about cold, belatedly posted for With Real Toads Tuesday platform.   (In the photo, which is mine, and taken at a different time than thoughts for the poem–so doesn’t really fit it–you can see three deer.)

Also, apparently some bloggers from blogger are having a hard time posting comments.  Please do let me know if you have any difficulty.  I’ve tried to go into my settings to at a minimum re-save them, but don’t know if that is doing anything.  Thanks.

 

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 9 Comments

Sounds of Snow Silence

January 3, 2015

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Sounds of Snow Silence

What passes for silence
in snow–
the flicks of flakes, shush
of pants’ legs, trees’ creak (rocking against
sky’s floor), the ocean
that is wind, the freeze
of my chin, which would sound, if cold
resonated, like a bolt tightening, lightbulb
screwed in, or when I bend
into the current, the glow
of its undertow.

***********************

55 (without title) for the G-Man, who lives on at Real Toads.  The image (as is normally the case on my blog) is some construct of mine.  (All rights reserved.)

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 23 Comments

Some Things Under the Moon

January 3, 2015

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Some Things Under the Moon

The moon out,
the emptiness around leafless limbs
is lit,
their fractal stretch sketched,
while firs are read first
as the absence of tree
rather than its fullness;
only, after a careful stare
does the eye find the slant uplift of
night-black boughs.

So, I often mistake the world.

And so I vow, the next noon, to look
at other people as out
to teach me enlightenment
(all those others who were previously out
to bar my way.)

Amazing, then, how much better
we get along.

************************

Another new year’s poem of sorts, thinking of the quotes of Susie Clevenger on With Real Toads (though I already linked a poem there, so will leave this be!)   Happy last New Year’s weekend before work onslaught begins!

The photo is not really right for the poem–as it doesn’t show a field of trees (!) but an old one that was closest I had.

 

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New Year’s Bring

January 2, 2015

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New Year’s Bring

What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
–Vern McClellan

I consider potato salad,
but potato salad sort of says
‘summer.’

‘Focus’ sounds better,
but smacks of discipline,
and discipline sounds
like a bummer.

I’ve never owned a brand new car
but would never stoop–which I know doesn’t make sense
given its geometry or price, but at least rhymes–
to a Hummer.

Besides, what new year times
most raise in me
is the wish to do
a runner.

But, here I am–
an Eve past the eve,
sans potato salad,
with an undistinguished car
full of undistinguished dings
and no clear thought of what to bring
to that great ring ring
just knelled–

There just seems nothing in my fate
that is not well past
its best-used-by date
(and long ago not sold.)

I grow old, I grow old,
I shall wear my trousers
rolled–

hisses the poet, or his
doppleganger,
through my rumpled brain folds–

Sigh.

Yet the whimper-worn words also wrangle
a sly bang–

for I’ve always rather liked
rolled trousers.

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For Susie Clevenger’s prompt on the New Year on With Real Toads to write a poem on a New Year aphorism.  (Also, although it is not a particular numeric milestone, I just realized with some astonishment that this is my 1905th post on this blog.  Crazy.)

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

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