Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: poem

  • Three Days

    August one and sweet gum leaves,
    enough to notice, are falling yellow
    on wilting grass. The air is dry;
    the parching season; joy does thirst;

    I crave a single meager bliss:
    a sip of wine, a furtive smile,
    but for now this cool wind gift will do.
    August two and insidious privet

    tentacle roots spit depleted red-
    clay clumps at me. I fight to claim
    a needed though paltry victory
    before winter’s cold, harsh truce.

    August three and butterflies flood
    their namesake shrubs decoding
    nectar’s notes on divine law while
    breeze and chime synch our requiem.

  • thunderstorm

    with violent disregard they’re wrung

    every drop freed from cauldron clouds

    parched dazed earth hisses till sated

    casting with gratitude excess away

    along fated paths to pool in pooling places

    again to rise to mimic our myths of ascendant souls

    trees now sing with discordant bliss

    sweet as sun-baked honeysuckle scent

  • Turtle

    When five, she scraped in soft, black ground

    a hole—a grave—to cuddle what she found

    below the steps; a baby turtle; dead.

    Splayed neck and legs and cracked green shell

    told her of death and worse, of disregard.

     

    She took her sister’s glass jewel-box

    and lay Turtle in on velvet cloth, covered

    him over, patted, caressed his final bed;

    she sang a song she’d heard the choir sing

    while fashioning a cross from sticks and string.

     

    Three days straight, she exhumed his remains

    but Turtle’s knowing smile did not change.

    At death, soul flies, flesh melts away, they said.

    At five, she wanted only fireflies’ night vitrine

    to sooth a disquiet mind; to run, to sing.

  • Earth: In the Beginning

    Mountain_Laurel_b_06012008

    Happy Earth Day! Keep the faith.

    In the beginning…
    not really the beginning,
    but a beginning almost comprehensible,
    a malleable mass twirling on the blowers pipe,
    Earth was cast from Heaven, thrown down
    spinning from the warmth of all she knew
    to cold and darkness thick with the roar
    of her passing and smells of her burning.

    She flew from birth light
    growing dimmer
    and colder to a sadness unfathomable.
    Could she weep for herself? Surely.
    Of all the lights distant but bright
    In their congruity, none tuned to watch
    Or cast a glance toward her hurling fate.
    Did she moan as she was flung

    To her perceived oblivion? Surely.
    Yes, we could have heard her cries
    And her gaseous guts rumbling,
    Crying for a savior for herself
    And for all that could be…crying
    For a hot, brilliant hand to capture her
    And roll her around in his golden palm.

  • Vulture

    Most conspicuous soarer of Georgia skies
    floats for eons circling till I grit my teeth
    in expectancy and finally he, snagging

    a hot air lift, shoots up straight, ascending
    like Jesus, wings stiff with ecstasy,
    blood stained beak thrown open to sing

    hosannas, but not for my ears. Then more
    eons and satiated or fearful of God-light or
    despairing still of Paradise lost, a minute

    wing-tip-dip spirals him in delirium down
    to vanish behind pine’s dark façade;
    shade veiled refuge for his grotesquerie.

  • I should have trekked more

    I should have trekked more;
    risked unmapped excursions; not
    Vegas, Turkey or New Guinea,
    those lauded, exotic locals; no.

    I should have taken LSD or
    chewed some shrooms and
    luxuriated in my own colors,
    sniffed the illusive waft of wild,

    instead:
    I’ve traipsed these bland locals;
    wary of running aground,
    of taking a hike in flip-flops,
    of eating forbidden fruit.

  • A Poem I’ll Write Someday

    I crossed the line without noticing;
    stepped over it as I missed my turn
    or as I mumbled execrations at the
    4-way stop, unsure of when to go.

    Yesterday I heard a guy mumbling,
    reading the words I carry on my back
    as he overtook me huffing hard,
    “Old man! Old man! Old man!”

  • Lumbricidae guiltos uniquitous

    Nothing is hidden, buried perhaps;
    dozed over by heavy machinery
    or a synapses misalignment sends
    the thing astray or it sits waiting, but
    it is not unknown and, unlike you and I,
    reeks of patience till revelation.

    There’s a creature, little known and blind,
    that eats its wandering way about;
    much like, in appearance, Lumbricidae
    and without judgment devours the gist
    of us, leaving a trail of detritus to be
    burned in heaven’s fire on that final day.

  • SPRINGPLACE

    Moravian Mission Spring 

    It’s not a familiar idyllic spring;

    not in shadowed woods, nor trickling,

    from ferny, mossed banks, mumblings

    of soothing myths……no.

    ·

    I regularly pass the washed out sign

    tilting on this shoulderless street,

    steep banked and crowned with iris &

    Cherokee rose caressing white porches

    aslant, dozing under ancient Oak spells;

    my shortcut to CVS, Ingles and Ace.

    “Moravian Mission Spring” it reads

    with the obligatory arrow pointing to

    a thin, discreet lane and bar gate

    that, though open, screams privacy,

    usually deterring my diffident nature’s curiosity.

    ·

    But, today, braving the chance of trespass,

    I enter under canopying trees emerging

    into opened pastured space replete with

    picnic shed, “Available for Reservations”

    with two reunion dates posted already.

    To the left, the spring in sun, in a slight depression,

    lies silently within its well-kept stone surround.

    ·

    I stand, wondering what epoch created

    this pool, what quantities and qualities of men

    and beast and gods have sipped its cold sanctity.

    Ghosts-grams of time tick up, bubbling

    from the shallow face; no numerals or hands

    or heralding sounds order their approach

    in ether globes in the unceasing flow

    from the past of this place, this Gaia eye.

    Through silent aquifers of space-time,

    tiny as fingers, large as centuries,

    they emerge into the bright, enormous

    air of this place and time to speak,

    not as or of me, but as another, unknown as I:

    ·

    An earth-toned Cherokee child, sweet coffee

    eyes gleaming, flings flurries of cold water

    and sand with broad bare feet and hands

    wetting others only he can see and tease.

    He straightens, jumping from the spring

    as if caught, but, unafraid, speaks into my eyes:

    ·

     “I am Adahy, Lives in forest, known here as John.

    My father sent me here to learn,

    not your facts and sums, your customs:

    If we could take up your ways he thought

    we might remain, but your greed and hate were

    too strong, too blind, too fleet to endure.

    You invoked a “God” that I still can’t see,

    or touch, even now, who hides above in a far place

    removed from his children and this creation.

    Why would he not crave to walk with you?

    ·

    ·

    This is where I grew in strength and first

    knew awareness of our fate—-our scattering.

    My bones, covered with stones on a red-earth hill

    along the trail following the sun, never

    knew arrival.  My spirit remains, dwells here.

    My bones tear the air with screams of leaving, still.”

    ·

    Blinking his sweet coffee eyes from pain to glee,

    he leaps back into the ancient speaking spring,

    splashing and taunting others only he can see.

  • Spirea: Burning Bush

    spirea 002

    Scattered Spirea blaze reddish/gold,

    flaming space-heater globes, warming

    my brown garden iced by lethargic air.

    If I lie naked among them could I thaw,

    and seep to meld with nourished root

    capillaries spiraling to a fruitful place

    of spring stirrings and glorious blooms?

    ∞

    Could I, in late March break ground,

    a green sliver twisting to light only,

    sated with discernment of all things,

    yet ordained by the flow only to flow;

    a Buddha sitting under The Tree of Life,

    hands cupped, not in prayer, but empathy?