Tag Archives: free verse

ingrained

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My poems seem like a recipe
for whole grain bread.
The water and oil,
though critical,
don’t mingle – dissimilar things
have no bound surfaces- but you add salt and sugar anyway-
Having faith in the mix.
Pouring in flour and seeds
can appear chaotic, yet it is
purposeful to the blend. Some flour
is white and smooth,
some of it is wheat and coarse
– textured-
with grittiness of flax seeds,
and oats, and rye.
A small divot in the pile
is home to bread yeast, a catalyst, an ache,
that fuels the rising dough over time.

If using a machine, then you’re done.

The poem can bake and rise, and still be tasty –
but it misses an opportunity.

A need.

Something you add.

Handle the dough
Grasp
Folding the blend
Feeling the texture
between your fingers.
Press into the bowl
massage and cajole-
form and remake
this merger, new
with each tumble
and clutch.

This wielding power comes from you
to make the poem combined and mingled
and mean something that will not dwindle
with time.

And the bread will be just fine.

*************
Trying to jump back in the saddle of writing again. I’m not so sure that this is best, final version of this. I enjoy breadmaking for the robustness of the bread and the physical handling that makes it such an individual creation, much like poetry.

After reading the completed poem, I like the additional symbolism that this offers as well.

If it weren’t for poetry

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If it weren’t for poetry
I think I might sleep better
and disregard those dreams
that alliterate the night,
and ride around looking –
looking for new vistas in the dark.

If it weren’t for poetry
I could just look at
red glass bottles and ignore
what hides behind
the refracting light.

If it weren’t for poetry
I might walk on the cool
morning grass, but never
look up to see the sun.

If it weren’t for poetry
words would never project
what I dream or see.

If it weren’t for poetry
I would not awaken.

If it weren’t for poetry.

sevens

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Stop and hear the hornpipe and jig
as the springtime rolls in, pushes away
winter’s white cloak.
It draws the living from their depth
to click heels – stomping the last
of the chill- pointing to summer’s thrill
as it leaps and bounces and reels.

**************
Something for the emergence of spring, also in keeping with the recent St. Patrick’s Day festivities.

recurrent

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I’m thinking about rivers

and how they flow away
-unsettled-
pressing the tall grass
and shearing
against the shoreline.

How they wash out the mud
and stir up silt
-channeling it all downstream.

Downhill rolling,
carrying the devices
of their own undoing,
they splay out
into the mud flats

stagnant

leaving behind

implements
that shape
and mold
the landscape,

accrued as the water slowly fades.

and somewhere,
a trickle of water
is dreaming of a torrent.

wonder

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When I look into the snow, I watch a single flake fall. If I follow it,
the spiral trail echos until it disappears among its forebearers
and covers the dead grass.

The next one tracks a different route,
but it achieves the same goal
as its predecessor, and the next one, and the next…

If I lose focus and see only the field, the snowfall moves in groups.
The trailing falls away as it becomes something
more wracked and solitary.

I am immobile.

Later, I can see the ground where my dogs make paths.
They follow the same tracks they make in summer months
to investigate the smells of the borderlands.

In the snow, the paw prints map the trips to their favorite tree
and circle back the long way around. It outlines a crescent shape
that lays a shadow against the porch light.

My neighbor has a grove of pampas grass
that looks like a huddled mass of people paused –
making their way around his house against the force of a winter gale.

There are no tracks.

pampas

Sleeper

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Show me your heavy eyes.

Between each field’s border,
the ground takes on shadows
as the sun begrudges
being dragged west
drifting in a transmuted
grey.

Let me hear you breathe a landscape

with hills barely hiding the
clapboard buildings and
lonely trees of the next homestead.

Embrace me
into your dream,
immobile among the passing scenes,
drawn into deeper sleep.

And then

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even as I watched,

the swing rocked gently
in an auric light.

the flowers leaned
toward the sun

you held close
your gathered words-
berries ripening in the basket

leaves, before falling,
turned from green
to yellow
or red.

the wind blew around,
whisking between the
clattering branches
before a whisper
of snowfall.

an ascendant path
obscured ahead,
reveals much
upon arrival.

There-

Look at how
you make me wait
for you.

*************
A poem about transitions and how things change on/in a moment. Something that is prominently in my thoughts these days. The “and then” moment. Sometimes grand in scope, sometimes merely just a moment. But the ‘and then’ always tilts the balance.

Thanks for reading.

Density crawled

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draping
the boughs of
a wintered tree

accrued
and angel-cared,
one two three,

yet subtraction
agreed,
with a
disappearance
forseen –

the implosion grown
abridged,
dripping

and small.

*********************
one of those little verse items that creep into your brain and don’t let go until you formulate a poem.