Tag Archives: imagery

Driving into Lascassas after midnight

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.

Rabbit

The sky was pallid, lacking device.

My ambition was weedy and my aims imprecise.

I walked near a garden while out on a stroll.

My mind in a spin that was out of control.

When a rabbit darted from beneath the hedge-row yew

out onto the pavement and pondered askew.

It paused just enough to acknowledge my glance

then hurried away in a leap and a prance.

My eyes then diverted to a swelling of phlox,

purple and white, and crept over rocks.

Opportunistic, these flowers that crawl

slow and indifferent of their beauty and sprawl.

A shelter for insects, this bloom carpet sum

covered terrain in a besetment of rhumbs.

The rabbit returned, hopped in a straight line,

I stood there connecting the points to design.

What wonder is here. What mystery there.

The path to discovery does not compare

the direction, the lines that we draw are just that.

Drawn from perspective, our own charted plat.

The rabbit now vanished, my lunch hour spent,

I returned to my workday with a poet’s intent.

A Christmas Card

Paper greetings, printed in opaque black,
swirled with ochre tones – and embossed
with tinsel and glare.

The serenity of straw and stable,
low station and artless beginnings-
in the midst of majestic creations.

Or how the mystery of snowfall
obscures the road ahead, yet in stillness
illustrates continuum beauty where we are led.

The green wreath, the evergreen bough-
decked in ribbon – tinged with gold
and captures glimmer and snow alike, somehow.

See the carolers, their faces
reddened in winter’s callous air –
mouths agape with our imagined joyful song and prayer.

In the bleak midwinter,
Snow lay all around, stars shown bright-
then pealed the bells more loud and clear,
Merry Christmas, Noel, this silent night.

eau

a fragrant voice,
a merging sound
to gather yellow, red and crowned

in a glottal stop
between the soundings
of the clock.

in a fashion, step
betwixt the puddle
stones and ripples, mixed.

lovers with their grasping hands-
arose, then reached at its command
and cleaved the blood-pricked
thorn, alone

in silence
and in clamored tones.

Concomitant

There is a slight twinkle
near the sun, and it brings a magic notion
down to one. There is a water droplet
near the stream, and it doesn’t bother
or even seem to care if it’s apart-
the teeming, rushing flow reprieves.
A single green leaf among the red and golden sheaves
and fading starlight, tropes in morning dark.
Waving grasses, stand in endless fields
beneath the doleful skies of clouds with daylight, now concealed.
Wisps of raven hair that battle with the breeze,
as eyes (that smile) seek out the day’s reprise.
And this, a thought to consort with the one,
the charm that twinkled with the sun.

 

the last

As it happens, I get lost in the sky
where sunsets stroll away.

A peaking light around a corner
beyond the frontier of yesterday

I look to the last remains
even when the shadows begin
and wrapped from behind in covers
I gaze toward a fading din.

I dream of passion reds
that trail to orange, bleed to pink.
Turning around in silent awe
to indigo in a wink.

And there the fire ignites upon
this early autumn eve,
a lover of the colored sky
embraced without reprieve.

the creation of a rain storm

Beyond the clouds
the red flame torrent ranged
from feature to embellishment.
The recall of a wind stroke
in the waning moments of August.
The resonance of a rain drop
after impact, with cause
to wipe it away – like tears.
Then to bring them
all to bear, in congregation
that wears and chases the dirt and seed alike.
That moment, ignites
the clean and growing rhythm
in the foreground.
All created without a sound.

present perfect

I do not wish to know
tomorrow’s faint and slow
ascent, nor do I care to see
if yesterday was lithe with glee –
Wasn’t last year so obsessed
and burdensome?
We can attest.
And back ten years, if sighted, could
we not have worried where we stood?

To keeping in the ‘now on scene’,
I hope that all my words are keen
and opening new each day
-as morning glories say –

that past affronts have gone to sour
and I embrace a blooming flower
that opens with the sun.

And here I have begun.

I find it in the feet of bell tones

I find it in the feet of bell tones,
after sorbing the sound as struck and deep.

I see the auric crest at the tip of leaves
in the moments of late summer’s wanton eve.

I feel the arc that bows in honor
of poetry heard, and hopes that won’t cease.

I hear it in the intake of calm
from the instant of lighting, the droning that sleeps.

It caresses the silence just beyond music,
and lingers on fingertips framed in release.

It walks in the tawny remembrance of noon-tide,
and ploys in the finish of our masterpiece.

And sounding the whisper of midnight and morning,
the tolling of hours when time passes, sweeps

away the cache of conflagration
leaving morsels we should keep.

I find it in the feet of bell tones,
with sounds that amble soft and sweet.

awaken

Sometimes,
I want to fall apart-

spontaneously disassemble
and disconnect into hundreds
of small fragments,
interlocking of course-
like puzzles of autumn afternoons
just out of the box.

The ones with rushing streams
that leave the edge of the frame
to some unseen bend.

The leaves are gilded and bronzed,
ready to separate
upon the first overnight rain.

And water droplets cling
to porch eaves, just at the crest
when tension breaks.

And we embrace
with a lingered kiss,
and we are knitted to keep from
unraveling.