Tag Archives: free verse

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.

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.

Now is the time for harvests

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Now it is time for harvests and from this I glean:

My small garden teems with tomatoes and poblanos, the plants endured through the dry spells of July and August – seeming to hope against events that their fruit would would come forth.

The window box of basil and sage and thyme is overflowing and beginning to seed, whilst the onions (shallots) share their home with clover – ever-present even after my attempts to weed.

This is a testament to their community and synergy, and I have learned to let them be.

The linden and pear are beginning to yellow and will soon fade and wear – leaving bones to bear the brunt of winter’s ungracious wind, the rattling leaves entrusted to another’s care.

By and by, more near than far – time will rest in plentitude with harvests of what I’ve tended to. I’m hopeful that my days were seeds – that the times I grew and raised and reaped met others’ needs or made amends, or shared a bitter cup whilst making friends.

There’s always one more

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In the still life of a stand of flowers, beauty only lasts as petals are reaching their horizon. In a second, they fall and fade from memory.

I pick just one in that moment.  On another day it will grow elsewhere, the memory of the first a propagation of seed and light.

In the waning moments of a day, there is a gasp of light before the darkness draws down the shade.

There are many more specks after it fades. A memory in one more snapshot.

Getting to know the sky requires the memory of space, the distance between and among the stars.  Finding one and remembering where it is.

But if you misplace it, no matter,  there’s always one more.  

The wisdom of stick people

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We make a step.

Then two. But never alike. There is so much space and planar geometry to consider.

Those drawn from points and lines, making conclusive statements from their biases in plain “right and wrong”

If x then y. Then straight ahead.

They are the ones inconsiderate of the spherical or the enveloping things about intervening axes and overlapped arcs.

Sometimes our way becomes brambled and thick with their branches.

It’s a crowd that crossed our path with felled reasoning, their limbs mangled in the present disagreements, All attempting to move forward.

We can go around it if we choose. We can scale the brush if we desire.

We may assist the ones blocking with compassion, convincing them to move another way.

Yet, the wisdom of stick people is to pile on, despite all admonishments, losing ourselves in the entanglements, rather than consider the spatial options.

We make a step, then two…

April 2020

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This is a time of blossoms.
Each day, a petal grows to hide the thorns.
The wind-kicked clouds cry onto the pavement
where people walked in groups
chattering just a few weeks ago.

The clatter and rumble of man’s progress replaced
as the thunder ricochets into the emptiness of night,
followed at dawn by singing birds
among our edifices
from their nests embedded in the steel and concrete.

Mountains breathe the clearing air in a respite
from our industriousness.

We mourn what we have lost,
both the temporary and the dear.

Yet as we cover our mouths in silence,
our eyes are open to see a blossoming world
giving so much in our absence.