Belated Words

Write On!

  • Haiku….Relief

    Syrupy air rinsed clean,

    squeezed out tight and huge to dry

    in a gentler sun.

  • Grand Kids

    So sweet, the summer scent of grasses

    enveloping, floating them with ease

    across the yard, never touching ground,

    it seems, tumbling, cart-wheeling,

    timorous hand stands, “Watch me! Watch me!”

    Green stained feet squeaking on cool wood floors.

    Toes striving, pinching for purchase

    on chairs and thighs, climbing with moist aroma,

    lap squirming, so willfully loving.

    Flesh of my flesh of my flesh;

    joyous as salvation, and just as fleeting.

  • Thought provoking

       Thank you, Anne, for this!

    Anne at A word or two has nominated Belated Words for A Thought Provoking Blog Award.  Anne was the first to offer actual constructive criticism that helped me improve.  She is very talented and versatile, writing short stories as well as poems.  Please check out her work!

    The rules are:

    1. Thank the person who nominated you.

    2. Post the image on your blog.

    3.Share seven things about yourself.

    4.Pass the award to five blogs you enjoy.

    O.K…I am a retired “UPS Man”, both my wives were redheads, but both have now gone gray (not my fault), I am still and will for ever be married to my second lovely wife, our kids, two each from our first marriages, are now grown with children of their own.  We have a total of ten grandkids with ages ranging from one year to seventeen years old, but we do not babysit!!  We cherish our privacy and solitude.  I am painstakingly slow when it comes to writing but that is just the way it is…I do some gardening, renovations on our house and have built a few pieces of furniture.  This is typical ‘old retired guy’ stuff, I guess, but it, particularly the writing, keeps me halfway sane…..thats enough….I guess we only really reveal our true selves in our writings…all the above is really just the circumstances of our lives.   Oh, yes! I want to share my favorite quote by Abraham Lincoln, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt”  We all violate this every day, don’t we?

    I’m going to violate the rules and only nominate two blogs which I follow. They may not respond, but I want to let them know how much I admire their work. Check them out, please.

    eulonia country

    Awakened Words

  • Cooking collards with Prometheus

     

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    First, a rinse under a gentle stream,

    veins down to earth cascades flow,

    cold water sweeping clinging grit

    rolling glints over savory emerald-ness

    of Gaia, like amoeba, feasting as they go.

    If prepared whole, some leaves would drape

    over both hands, an offering of perfection,

    but, as we are, pretenders to the thrones,

    we claim all honor of discovery and prep;

    we must tear, chop and season to our taste;

    salt, pepper, onion, pork, even brown sugar

    Are we attempting ambrosia?

     Collards, food of a more caring god?

    Perhaps, Prometheus presented this gift

    to us along with his glowing coals

    since we, had been denied ambrosia

    and fire’s warmth for no other reason than….

    I do not know why we were denied;

    merely created and left in want.

    I do know, sadly, that few of us have suffered

    as Prometheus, to love and care for mankind.

  • cognition tests…

    During the first break in the tests, you cried;

    frustration twisted your face tight as pain.

    Tears could not blur fright from your seeking eyes

    as you pled, silently, for solace which

    I tried to exude by words, touch, even

    by pure will.  “There’s no right or wrong answers,”

    I smiled, “the test will help to understand

    why you forget….”

                                  and look at me without

                                  comprehension as if I were a stain

                                  or quadratic equation on a board,

                                  and obsessively relive your childhood,

                                  and stumbling, you fall against the world.

                                  

    You are the locus, the center of spin…

     your affliction makes you so….I know that

    but try to think this way, it’s more soothing:

    take a line….horizontal is calming….

    and on that line, you are a data point,

    a point enclosed and held in the safety

    of a cluster of points, immersed and bathed

    in a like community, and not left

    sitting alone, an outlier astray;

    a unique Me trembling in white space.

  • I’ll mow the yard…

     

    I just fell off the page;

    for hours it seems I slid

    and at the edge my hands,

    cupped in ells, failed to grasp,

    and so, until I crash,

    I’ll pretend I’ve more important things to do.

  • I hate politics

     

    They ask for money daily now;

    horrid how principles rain ruin,

    hinder purpose, drain the coffers.

     

    I give one more quick donation;

    ten dollars, freely with sadness

    …..and hope.  We have a little left

    this month, but the donut hole looms,

    a snare that could snap both bone and will.

  • Dread

    Always the palpable dread turning behind

    my smile or frown; I’m the victim in the

    horror film that feels the sentient house’s

    aura on approach, the foreboding, the angst.

    Behind the pulled shade she waits to inform,

    throwing looks, crying distrust of even me,

    her tenaculum snared offspring.  I come to do

    her bidding grudgingly; a calloused hearted son.

    I’ve never learned: I attempt to reason, to plea,

    but logic is dead in her house, killed by disease

    which mints lies and villains as readily

    as harsh light cast shadows onto a wall.

    She’s not the one needing help she warns,

    but the others and, yes, me too, if I think so!

    So absolute in her anger…I wish it were true;

    this helplessness precludes affection.

  • The Body

    The body fails the mind even before

    the last moment cast consciousness to where

    it goes.  Forget disease, the slippery tub;

    muscle slackens or turns to stone, wrought hard

    by pain from errant bone, the ear, the eye

    can fail from use , the joints refuse, the lungs

    rebel; the parts unite to fight for warmth,

    for softer, for a peace, stasis, for time.

    The will can be hard hit by pain and dreams

    of youth deferred until can fade or slink

    away hardly noticed or lamented.

    But yet, a mountain bald, a topless sky

    invites just me to come and see a bit

    of truth, hidden, held close along a ledge

    secured by pine. A sweaty climb along

    the bluff, a grunt of pain a pill can not

    relieve, and now I strain to see tiny

    iris, cristata; blooming blue and gold

    and white so pure that God is real,

    at least, worth consideration.

    Atop the bald, a boulder makes a bed

    of soothing heat to draw fatigue away,

    and leave a space in which a breeze warm with

    the smell of pine needles can ease my hurt.

    Dwarf-crested iris, cristrata
    (stock photo)

    This poem comes from 2002 and rings even more true today than ten years ago.  This is not about remorse, self-pity or even ageing, but rather the soothing power and joy that the natural world can provide, at least temporarily, if a person is so incline to make an effort to see the wonders that exist.

  • My Fortieth Year…3:47 A.M.

    There were footsteps outside my door last night;

    loose gravel crunched, there was a catch in a gait.

    Something stood squinting in the darkness

    checking a number or matching a date.

    My heart ran rampant, throbbing, pumping dread;

    an emptying slash…..now a cavernous hollow.

    Opened now……anti-being knows my smell;

    when will it beckon for me to follow?

    I was actually 40 before I seriously considered and accepted the concept of mortality.  I awoke in the middle of the night with the most horrid feeling which haunted me for days.  This poem was an effort many, many years  ago to put words to it.  This feeling initiated the clichéd “mid-life crisis” which I quickly and completely recovered from…I’m now content, accepting and at ease.