It’s a Long Way from Here

(For Melani, Dru, and Samantha) to Maryland, Pittsburg, or Mozambique the eating heart is famished of. Love is in December, its feast of snow and weary. Worry is the prevalent breakfast, and the dial of the sun is careless of all wanting. Daunting is coffee, cold with the unrequited yearn of waiting. Late to party … Continue reading It’s a Long Way from Here →

Of Three

I have two things and a wife, a triumvirate of something within the all order of my life. The mind with its own triumvirate of imagination, thought and memory wants—no demands— a going forth into a new gathering and brooks no traverse of its seek for scraps and litter along the way. It brings me … Continue reading Of Three →

The Isolate

He waits in this emptyroom for a poem or perhaps,here in this garret, a thought from God.The room’s light casts backat him a mask, half in light,one eye—brightenough from shadows, a room wherethere is a this and an is:coffee mug on a desk, deskcluttered but solidwhere a penciled hand scrawlsor waits to scrawl when it … Continue reading The Isolate →

The Green of Winter is Gray

There is nothing green, more or less, about winter; nor more or less black and white. The black of these blue mountains shadow down our yellow valley winter (summer, spring and fall.) The red dusk and dawn prophecy more or less tells the weather of our each new day a hope winter (summer, spring and … Continue reading The Green of Winter is Gray →

Bunions

It’s on the left and bent left, damned thing, by a shape of my vanity’s blue boot. Am I not left enough? Behind these blue boots are rough unsuede shoes— would have marched to Selma in my fashion-faded denim red; but something else was going on that day. It wasn’t bunions or anybody’s else’s business … Continue reading Bunions →

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

Whether or not Wallace Stevens idea in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird was our dependency on perception when we shape our ideas of the word is not for me to say. But having precepted the poem, that is how I see it.

Odysseus’s Helmsman

What I could see, my ears waxed against the maelstrom of their song, were skimpy hags. I, who had seen fools die to gold a twat’s beguile, could see nothing there to turn for; though the mast-bound Captain made urgent motion to till shoreward, the last I’d heard, before the silence, was “disregard,” “maintain” his … Continue reading Odysseus’s Helmsman →

Hope is a Thing. . .

The first thing that comes to mind re the Ragtag Community prompt is Hope is a Thing with Feathers by Emily Dickinson. I read this poem as a response (and a response I need badly) to the admonition that one must "Have faith to garner wings of an angel."

Love Weather This Winter

Chilly as after-this reception— Cold as a whenever shoulder— Frosty as forget-it’s smile— Frigid with never embraces— Glacial as if.

“When Great Trees Fall” By Maya Angelou

Again, for today’s Ragtag Community Prompt, I turn to another poet who has spent time thinking about hewn and how the hewing examines precious. This poem by Maya Angelou is less about man’s action in hewing, than it is about the universal hewing that takes all life. In it we hear what we lose when … Continue reading “When Great Trees Fall” By Maya Angelou →