The skeleton hangs in an autumnal quiet,
With nothing to stir them bones to click .
The moon shining in as a spot keen to spy it; a spider’s web droops, it’s ironic
The silence gives nothing away
And the moonlight simply stays,
Casting shadows and a pall
For bones that are buried in the wall.
Like a flying squirrel that barrels down from its perch in the spruce,
limbs outstretched to maneuver the route.
Or a frog sitting pond-side, croaking then hops,
extending its haunches, an arc then kerplop.
A paper airplane from the rafters, lofted on air,
glides downward in spirals – a no assistance affair.
The mighty blue whale swims along as it sings,
I wander my world, and I ponder these things
with no such breaching to remark on my way.
Some landings are harsh with a huge debt to pay.
But the ease of the motion, the faith in the flight,
and the jump into deepness with the floor so benighted.
That gravity holds so much in its hands,
or lets as much go as we give way our stance
from a limb or a high point in a precipitous fall.
The squirrel nor the frog or the whale know at all
how the glide of the plane comes in for a landing.
Yet I know that I move in ways far less demanding,
with not so much height or a flight on a good day.
The landing is harsh, with a huge debt to pay.
In my personal shadow-box are many treasures and perhaps some rocks, toys and memories from my past, and in the shadow-box, they last.
From my pocket to the side, I pulled a pinch of something ossified, what once may have been from a wound debrided. It’s simply a pebble, I’ve now decided.
A marble, glassy, green and blue, from a collection of many I had and threw around the playground tree at school, collecting spoils for keeps like jewels.
His gun raised up high, a green plastic soldier from a platoon of recruits that I had as I was older. Despite the difference in my age and size, I never developed a loud battle-cry.
A tiny, tyrannosaurus rex, a figurine without a sex, insignias on patches and badges – but none of them jog my memory with matches.
A matchbox car painted apple-red, with opening doors and the letter zed on the hood. Don’t ask me why it’s there, I’m not sure I could.
An old pocket watch that no longer tells time, I’m grateful to all that had passed in its prime, next to a heart made from elastic and beads, stretchy and tactile and has met all my needs.
A rounded, polished piece of quartz made from tumbling, now distorts lines and letters like mumbling. This shadow box where these trinkets have graced, all the while keeping my memories encased.
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.
Close your eyes and count to ten.
Wishes won't come true 'til then.
Considerations blink and mar your thoughts.
Up to two you've tied a dream in knots.
In this moment, circumspect
reaction might cause you neglect.
The delay in what your heart is wishing for -
not long - succinct - a brief six-seconds more.
Close your eyes, accumulate -
(your mind digresses while you wait).
Make a list of salient bullet-points
to greet the sunrise when you wake your voice.
And in the moment just before
you reach the end count's opening door,
in heroic fashion speak your truth and due
and banish all the hardness once beshrewed.
It’s a sound welling up from a guttural wheeze,
Brought forth in the presence of an obvious need.
Clusters of friendship, opening a door
for giggles and snorts and guffaws galore.
Nature’s convergence is there to create,
though few evident species can cachinnate.
The turtle, the emu, the rabbit or shrew
None of these chortle or cackle or spew
forth the boisterous emission of laughter,
the kind leaving you breathless and heaving thereafter.
And from the next room, while I search the thesaurus,
sniggling and outbursts blend into a chorus.
I’ve captured a moment, but not twinkling insight
to laughter, the remedy cure-all tonight.
*****
It has been quite a while since I have had the inspiration to write a poem. The last half of 2023 has been a difficult time. My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in late summer and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. This evening, she was having a Zoom gathering with four of her best friends, and the laughter emanating from their conversations was infectious. Try as I may, I can’t reproduce their joy. But perhaps I shouldn’t worry about that, the joy is medicine for her. Thanks for reading. :)
A shrieking blue jay sounds a turning point. The day might be too long. Cardinals perch in boxwood sacs, reminding me of those now gone. I've skirted 'round an earthen hole, peering to the bottom. Dirt and pebbles slip from my steps and down into the dark and glum. Choristers pause, holding a note that pierces incense smoke. The carillons ring out the hour and half a prayer's invoked. Is this how changes snap and tear when events go awry? a grinding crevice in the ground? a ripped seam in the sky? Careful plots, with no solid facts are awfully mistook, our hero left with no recourse but to rely upon a hook. A shrieking blue jay sounds a turning point. The day might be too long. Cardinals perch, reminding me of people that are gone.
A jellyfish cloud drifted in the sky
propelling itself hither and nigh.
The type of motions that mesmerize,
whilst I woolgather time in the ocean wide.
A rabbit perched upon some pillow fluff,
awaiting a moment to jump, and not to muff-
then disappear inside a hole in a huff.
(All this I’ll imagine soon enough.)
And later, the sky I watched was flattened and grey.
A canvas without texture on a humid summer’s day
settled in to remove my imaginative display.
And the daydreams diverted down and away.
The shades of green caught now in my sight,
Jagged lines on the edge of the canvas’ chalk-white.
whispering connections to the last vestiges of light.
And the opalescence of dreams settled in for the night.
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.
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.
Taps and Ratamacues 