Belated Words

Write On!

Author: Leo

  • what’s your name?

     

    Crap!  What’s your name? I know your face, your touch;

    Remembered colors, tones and patterns tease!

    It’s only a word, an ordering, our farce of supremacy.

     

    Yes! you grew behind our house….the southern wall

    Against sun-bleached boards….gray and mute;

    Towering stylized suns in yellows, browns and greens

     

    Relentlessly tracking your maker east to west.

    Even if I could say your man-given name would…

    you acknowledge me; curtsy or sing or curse?

     

    Your name….a memory lost.  Is it a cleansing,

    Allowing a simple bliss in being and yellows,

    Without the words to anguish or sadden?

     

     

     

     

  • Stones

     

    Those we’ve left by the road still wander among us.

    We lean on their diminished bodies as we move;

    Talc-tasting air, burning of urine and hot stones,

    singes our skins, shriveling our memories of them.

     

    A whisper has passed: this road is closed to us.

    This ditch of stubble will be our home for an hour,

    a day, an eternity, until our fate again inhales,

    forcing us up to walk, to endure this endless road.

     

    Ahead, wavering green hills reject our pleas.

    Their distant canopies’ chattering falls away,

    falls to fear, as we gaze with one breath held.

    Another stone is thrown to bloody our hearts.

     

    My child on the sharp, hard rack of my hip

    stares…..eyes passive as shimmering stones.

    My child of bone in his withered flesh bag…..

    clenches the one ragged wall of his home.

     

    This was originally titled Refugees and was reproduced here with a few changes from a copy dated October, 2003

  • Haiku

    final bucket list:

    Do not make a bucket list

    green frog is singing

    IMG_20220310_162307598_HDR_2

  • pilgrimage

    When I was a kid, parents could still release their kids upon the world in morning’s sun with a simple, “Be back by suppertime.” We were free to wander the nearby pine thickets, brier patches, train tracks and trickling streams. We wanted to go to spots where our bikes had to be abandon; hastily pushed into the broom sage field to hide them. Yes, bikes were stolen back then but that was our worst fear; we felt safe otherwise. Each day was a pilgrimage and the destination was of little importance. I was searching for something to surprise, to quicken interest, to justify my prowling barefoot and shirtless through terrain replete with sharp stones, briars, thorns and snakes and I, or we, often did.

    Once, Charlie and I found a huge, dead frog and decided to dissect him. We, or at least, I learned more about biology (and guilt) that day than I would ever learn in a classroom. I also learned that persimmons sucked and muscadines were divine and that reaching to pick blackberries from a bush and suddenly seeing a king snake stretched along the length of the very cain you were about to touch could make you run faster than any amount of training or blood doping.

    Now, in my seventies and putting-off a knee replacement, my walks are limited to walking my dog in our neighborhood. Luckily, it is an old subdivision with many lots, too low to build on, left in woods and undergrowth. A few days ago I saw something I would have hiked days to see if that were possible. I remember lamenting several time over the past few years that I had never seem an owl in the wild despite many years of bird-watching (purely amateurish in execution). That day I saw one, a block away from my house; not just a little screech-owl sitting on a limb but a huge Great Horned Owl sitting atop a dead opossum just off the roadway. There was one of those movie moments when the frame is frozen and nothing moves, not even a breeze. I turned my head for an instant to check my dog’s response. I looked back and the owl was gone; silently he had vanished leaving his opossum and a memory I will always have; well, at least for a long while.  Walk with open eyes and heart; amazing things hid in plain sight.

  • grackles swarm the trees

     

     

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    Once again, delightful squeaking swarms the trees,
    celebrating en masse, here to there; chucked down
    by some suspect deity who, for whatever reason,
    laments or teases my petering out; my “it is what it is”

    Rescued, again, by one with a scratching voice;
    compelling a lifting of chin, a prying away of eyes
    from ground, from monitored, measured steps;
    I search the canopy for Joy: There! She lingers!

  • greed

    Perhaps, I am too quick to call it Greed:
                        this yearning for an accumulation,
this lust of Mine! self-gratification,
                        a trophy case crammed with coin, 
heads (metaphorical and otherwise),
                        ivory trinkets carved of banned tusk,
Likes, notches on the bedpost 
                        (that shows my age!) Firepower!
The rich give, but not without accolades, 
                         plaques for display and….receipts.
Nature demands self-interest 
                         if we are to survive, but studies show:
the poor give more than the rich;
                          percentage wise, of course!
(that could be Fake News)
                         One thing to me, another thing to you.
What of a heart soothed by Riches lure
                          more than thanks of those in need?
Perhaps, I am too quick to call it greed;
                          one thing to me, another thing to you.

  • Witness

    The leaves are gone.  Wind rejoices in
Their leaving for their dance betrays;
Painting hints of body on his shame.

Shoulders cringe under iced breath
ravaging this frigid, emptying street.
Chimes to the right sing winds intent,

To flee this memory, falling behind,
To allow us to lie in a contrived bliss
Like those wreaths on those graves.
    The leaves are gone.  Wind rejoiced in
their leaving for their dance betrayed:
painting hints of body on his shame.

A witness of this carnage, he whirled
in helplessness, sharing horrid chaos
with us despite our hands over our ears.

Shoulders cringe beneath iced-breath
ravaging this frigid, manicured yard.
Chimes to the right sing winds intent

to flee this memory, fall far away,
to lie in a contrived complacency like
these plastic wreaths on these graves.

  • Bobcat On The Cartercay

     

    Stock photo
    Wild_BobcatThis is an old poem, thought lost, but recently recovered.  A real memory.

     

     

    Haibun: Bobcat On The Cartercay

     

    Drifting on a jade current slow as this August day; the erratic clunk of oar-gunnel collide complements mosquito’s whine and only a raucous call of  Dryocopus pileatus startles me back from my innocuous memory glide.  My fingers, trailing through the cool water, paint splendid, ephemeral works of art. Verdant spillings of laurel, fern, jeweled weeds and clinging vines tumbling from tracked banks, glossy with malodorous mud, narrow and crook my creek canvas.  Around a turn so slight and he is there; we both, mid-creek, suddenly aware and he, swinging around, retraces his eddying path.  Reaching the right bank, he emerges with a rippling shake and his stare follows me ….me, staring with wonder, drifting by, while his eyes, softly intent, expressed no surprise, no reproach I can discern.  None at all.  Now turning, unhurriedly….one step….two….into the dappled green tangle and he is gone…..like a thought lost; his image in my mind instantly vague, generic… swirling by.

     

    obliviously

    intended prey   a drake bobs

    summer’s shallow shade

     

     

    Bobcat

    Drifting on a jade current slow
    as the August day..…. the erratic
    clunk of oar/gunnel collide
    complemented mosquito whine
    and only the raucous call of
    Dryocopus pileatus startled me
    from an innocuous memory glide.

    Verdant spillings of laurel, fern,
    jeweled weeds and clinging vines
    narrowed the creek from tracked banks
    glossy with malodorous mud.

    Around a turn so slight and he was there;
    we both, mid-creek, suddenly aware….and
    swinging around, he reached the right bank
    emerging with a shake; his stare, void
    of any emotion I could discern,
    followed me ….me staring with wonder.
    His eyes, softly intent, expressed no reproach.
    Then turning, unhurriedly….one step
    ….two….into the dappled tangle,
    he was gone…..like a thought lost;
    his image instantly vague and generic.

    A drake, his intended prey,
    bobbed the left shallows obliviously.

  • Haiku

    Dog squats

    Head held high

    Not sniffing

     

    Honeysuckle scent

    With head high….dog slowly squats

    Intent….not sniffing.

     

  • Bird

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

    Speckle/breasted thrasher chucks the one-eye;

    tschuck!…tschuck!…tschuck! he warns and scolds

    perceived encroaching.  Sorry, I mumble at his cry.

    How did I reach this instant, this soul plateau,

     

    accepting censure from an ill-mannered bird….

    his chirps articulate, more true than mine;

    their spring pure unlike my struggling words

    failing to fathom their season, their place in time?