Category Archives: free verse

The meaning of color

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Color me up to the edges of my outline in thatches of crayon strokes; bits of ochre, fern and midnight blue.

Rarely will I bleed ink on the pages, but mostly to my fingertips, black and blue from pressure on the quill.

Means are geometric for non-normal distributions. A gathering blue that peaks then tails into infinity.

Anything that rarely happens once is blue, like the synodic moon to achieve its baker’s dozen dominance.

But in the context of other palettes, blue marks the calmness

Love brings to the spirit.

Between the lines

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And as we are shuffling, waiting in line

birds sit and watch from evergreen branches.

The mystery rises, twisting, revealing our faces

tired from the digging with tools of our making

just to stand in the queue, biding our time.

Even on holiday, following the line

for small worlds, or out of this universe thrills,

the heat from the pavement blows into the shade

and we await our turn at willful escaping.

Something has bound us in place in this time.

Staving a cadence with melody lines;

whistling a tune with hopes of inception,

I choose the notes that fall out on the page.

Writing as though I have skill for creating

a world that exists for our meeting in time.

But now in a bulwark, some hold the line

awaiting a plane of a choice, to unfold.

Dots creep and crawl from out of the trenches

enveloping ones who can’t hear the ground breaking

and those who are wicked die time after time.

Perspective on a hill

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The view from the window is a hill I won’t die on.

Framed on all sides by brick and concrete or old pine trim, it is a portal of a shelter built with a single perspective.

This limited view of the world, covered in dull charcoal – interwoven to attract our focus and screen out flies – mutes the light of new vision and also things to the left and right of the sight line.

Though I do see the changes of a season through it. When the orange and reds arrive, and I see leaves falling – I want to see more. More than this view offers.

And I peek around the edges of the frame to see the wind move through and the rainclouds form. This, rather than wait for darkness to enclose the hill outside my window, is a better view.

Even more so to step outside to feel the wind and hear the leaves. To watch as the rain arrives, then departs. The uneven steps and grassy plots to the pinnacle -where I can see more horizons.

Beyond the window, the hill is even more beautiful when I’m out upon it and living the terrain. This is a hill I will die on.

Fishing Is Many Things

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It is an effort, to awaken before the dawn, when the water is like glass

and fog clings to the cat tails in the quiet moving hours.

It is faith, to set your mind on a place you believe to be a “lucky spot.”

It is diligence, to prepare your gear for the casting. Untangling lines, selecting a lure or bait, the weight to place it at the depth of optimization.

It is serenity, following the sailing line to the splashdown.

and then – patience – the wait, the weight of time on your mind – but with no unsettling burden.

With all the effort and often no reward, having to throw back something too small, or catching the boot of a tall tale from long ago, or dredging up someone’s garbage.

The fishing is more about the process, rather than the end result. If you designed the process well, then a catch was inevitable – though not always a fish. It is no wonder you excelled in the preparation of tasks such as this.

It was skill that walked the halls, teaching others the high loft of a cast to the horizon or how to bait for walleye – wriggling worms – versus musky, with big colorful spinners or spoons.

It was your laboratory to assess, and we were neophytes to the process,

Teaching is what it was. Fishing was teaching.

From your spot on some empyreal bank, you can see the slack line of your recent cast, then begin to reel it in from the lake

and we, your family of friends, see the ripple of water left in your wake.

*******

A poem written to honor a good person who was taken from us way too soon.

Torte, with my father

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Chocolate dense as darkness.

The flourless cake, its heaviness derived of bittersweet.

A china cup , a black pool swirled with an opaque liqueur.

The taste of each as contribution –

rancor offset by the affable.

I sit across the from the empty seat you once used.

My memories are heavy with the affection of your company

and controverted by your absence.

Each bite with a following sip a battle of emotions.

How it lingers, the memory of your sudden death

followed by the overtones of your prescience.

The night we talked late, and you said “the parent becomes the child”

Yet, I still want to ask you for advice and you never quite accepted mine.

The sound of my fork clinks and the resonant ding of the cup

as I set it down upon a saucer

all I hear in reply.

*****A memory of my father on this Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Driving into Lascassas after midnight

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Driving into Lascassas after midnight, when only the ghosts walk.

The glint of streetlights launches from the pavement,

a blank page to capture dreams

and past countenances in the moonlight.

The words you speak echo in the night and pass through blinking traffic lights;

As poems create themselves in flight.

Not like arriving at LaGuardia on a Sunday afternoon,

with its hallways filled with a thousand stories at every turn.

There is a rush and jumble to this world,

only small pockets of stillness swirl

to float a verse into the air.

Most often colliding in the face of a hurried elsewhere.

Almost never staying free and clear,

like driving through Lascassas after midnight

with soundless ghosts and streetlight glare.

Poteau (For Patricia)

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In the mornings we always welcomed the day looking at your Poteau Mountain.

And far away the mists crawling over its topmost trees towards the base –

the sun rays up through the field, a race.

A visual prompt of creation’s way, and you would say – it’s going to be is a pretty day.

Our conversation would turn a phrase while we drank our coffee

and up the hill, the blue-green tinted tree line spilled into oak and rock about halfway down.

In summer, with the evergreen on display – it always was a pretty day.

In autumn when the leaves turned red, we made a trek – the road ahead was rocky, steep,

We climbed the hills and look out on the valley’s thrills below. A cloud passed through the brush and stayed.  It blocked our view but didn’t ruin that pretty day.

A frost would settle winter mornings on the upper trees under a cloudless awning clear and blue. And as we sat behind a framed glass view, the window shared your mountain too.

With winter’s frigid accolades, you never ceased to smile and say – it sure is a pretty day.

Springtime storms would hang and cling, the thunder from your mountain sings a song of praise and grace.  The distant rumbling warned of storms, but you were never made forlorn or worn or gray.  Even this was such a pretty day.

Those mornings when you weighed your heart, did you ask God for each fresh start?

The mountain only in your view – a post -but sky and land beyond that too.

And all this scene of wondrous awe, the trees, the sky, the rocks and all

in your witness, don’t dismay –He said –

for here Patricia is your pretty day.  

Life on the game show channel

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I sit and breathe in your long silences,

the room filled with TV conversation

about the puzzle just done or the prizes they won.

Lounging in quiet while you sleep,

then you stir to acknowledge the commercial break

about stuffed-crust pizza, ready to bake.

These moments are interludes,

built as a ladders to an afterlife. While we brood

all our days picking out letters for words forsooth

or the answers from among the multiple choices we choose,

we have one eye on the stuffed crust pizza, ready to bake.

The beginning of the game is rapid fire, and everyone gets an answer right

and we are introduced to each contestant’s life, the bright light

of their enthusiasm spurring us to play along

wishing we knew all the correct responses from wrong

or knew the best path we could take.

The episode of this game soon passed

the winnings of our participation never would last.

While from question to question we walk in our mind

’til our slumbering surpasses our tangible time

we are barely awake, our dreams filled with ladders

and craving for pizza already baked.

Cantabile

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America,

about this unfinished symphony…

The movements that proceeded this one are fading and the players are tired.

This current antiphonal fugue section isn’t working well. The swells grows louder and less melodious by the measure. Gone are the phrases that rise and fall in unison. In their place are resonant pedal tones, brassy glissandos and clashes of cymbal and blat. Largely single voices that raise the din.

Remember the sweeping melodies of the past. True, the ancient tunes of the indigenous are mostly lost, but they were here when the land was born and still echo in our ears if we just listen. Our young work of art holds the jigs of immigrants, the hymns of the pious and yes, the blues of the enslaved. Some songs were joyous, others dripped with pain and sadness. They may have been singular in their experience, but they are unifying in their impact.

Across the landscape, the gospel choir of sinners and saints and the choral moments of victory shouted that we shall have a song, and you gave us one.

Contemporary ditties dot the eras, but do not define the work. Populism accentuates the moment, but ad libitum cannot sustain the chords. Intervals from fourth to fifth and augmented sevenths resolve themselves to prime.

Anger and happiness are to be heard throughout, folded in as motifs – but it must lead to where it begins and ends, in one voice.

A voice shared of past and future songs, of freedom for all, ringing bells of prosperity for each one of us, crescendo in equality and building the next movement.

Cantabile.

Perception

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You ask me to think about paint colors,
and the soft gray you’ve chosen.
The hue of it is blue, but it reflects
a green during midday, when the sun is highest.

Blue is a color that knows no season, and paints the infinite sky

while green implies the growth of things – dotting where the eye sees.

Grey, itself – like clouds obscure the sky or fog obfuscates the landscape.

Such a color – gray/grey – spelled two ways yet has a continuum of sound transitioning between “a” and “e”

– in both, the sum is intermediate.

I slow down the diphthong
and try to catch the tones between the chromatic versions.
I voice this change in sound color aloud, with the intention
to consider them without interference.
You give me a sideways glance
and say, ”No, I meant, how do they look?”

******

A poem originally written in 2015 during NaPoWriMo, dusted off and reworked here.