Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: poem

  • 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.

  • Dying Pine

    The beetle-ridden column of pine, still

    coppery-brown—-stark against a flood

    of deciduous cousins’ May green,

    looms, surrounded by shedded, layered

    bark chunks and brittle limbs detached

    and dropped to litter his meager yard;

    precursors of the fall, numbered in

    days or months, unknowable, to come.

    Still, in wind, his stilted sway of youth,

    but now with creaks and groans of doors

    closing….opening, still offering his body

    to nuthatch, squirrel and the jay and still,

    though fading, his green crescent of a

    smile at his tip-top, unencumbered by

    regrets or daunting musings of mortality.

  • TC

    tc

    She’s gone for good this time…..I think.

    I’ve not seem her for seven days.

    Wet food collects slugs in her bowl; three days

    of rain evicting them from danky hidey-holes.

    That is the only sign. We rarely spoke

    ……or acknowledged the other.

    I did stoop to offer my hand, a back-arching lintel,

    ……….but not too often; no spoiling.

    She was a true hunter; eating her kill

    with no gloating, no display for display’s sake.

    She preferred the wild-wide-world, at least,

    that’s what I tell myself……as balm,

    but I really can’t know cat thought,

    or human thought for that matter.

    Others I’ve left to wander? Too aloof,

    too free with freedom, or has it

    just been easier to let them roam

    so blame can only know their names?

  • Sunbathing

    Tomorrow, a flirting innocent, slips a string
    around a toe— tugging, enticing, implying
    realization is just past that task.  Just there!
    Yesterday, an old neuter, ask questions,
    prods for justification, cast doubts.

    But occasionally, the prods, the tugs relent;
    my heart races with the pleasure of strange time,
    Now ,when  the sweet smells of oil and radiant heat,
    even that of chlorinated water, delight and paint
    a lazy smile.