A response to poetry

Dear poet, I have so enjoyed your poem:

Devolving Winter

I lingered to watch the snowfall settle
upon an outside marble pedestal –
building layer-on-layer of snowflake and ice,
fractal and spacious, this echelon

Christmas passed

I sit at the side of an aging Christmas tree,
its lights still glittering, the ornaments of memory
and seasonal delight put away since yesterday.

a plain heaven

A version of heaven –
through vertical blinds

A Winter Song (A Cento)

In silence, they dissolve before dawn-
the words my heart was calling.
They are not in the sun,

Echoing

I’ve got no poem today, but it must be okay.
I’ve thought about monkeys, how walruses play,

Seasonal

The leaves lay spread amidst a coverlet of snow-
one a bit early, the other late in season

Earnest

Having arrived, definitively,

The issue

The paper product, emergent from the box-
standing at attention, waiting on the swap,

Wood matters

Smoke arises from the chimney stack
in billows
from an untended burn.

Listen

I’ve spent the week listening to songs
and paying tribute to old movie stars.
Ol’ Gator and the Crewe are gone,
the coffee pot is growling on.

Break

Here waiting for the sunrise while I dwell in morning’s dim –
my harboring of hope is ill and sweating in its sin.

arise and sing

Of leaves,
liven up their dance
a rustling disturbance.

Lumbolesh

Seeking the sun and feeling the sky,
the bumbledy centipede swerves and winds by –

Symmetry

I spent the day pruning a tree,
its branches wild, a sprawling siege

Formula

Life gets ahold and it herds, when all told
the work of the poem is always tenfold.

Maybe

There is a secret around the corner
that the roses will be red instead of pink;

the sunset and sunrise will both illuminate
the dark moments – far more eloquently than any word.

There are remnants of language,
The laughter of loved ones and strangers
are beauty in a spattered world –
and strung-together notes of the discordant are melodious when unfurled.

There is a depth in every eyeful gathered from a window
and a coolness in the soil grasped by each hand.

You feel the heat that summer’s afternoon conceives,
and I hear the whiskers of October’s morning in the leaves.

There are shadows that crawl in the day
and charming smiles that ornament a night.

And this is truth’s impassioned plea to our humanity,
and affirms the secrets we sometimes cannot see –
perhaps, life is our communal way to share
and maybe, each one of us is rare.
******
The events of this past week have weighed heavily on me – the loss of two very successful, highly creative individuals to suicide, and the realization that this type of hopelessness impacts far more people than we know/understand. There is such beauty and importance in life, and each one of every one of us has a rare gift to share with others. Remember this.
Wishing you all a wonderful week.

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Triple threat

Three of them, wandering off at the barbecue:
Jonathan, Allison, Rebecca Williston
didn’t remain for the hot dogs and chili sauce
wanderlust leveled a lure at this crew.

Spoken

My words disappeared under the moonlight,
The sounds of dissipation fading fast
to quiet in a cavernous depiction,
a blank homage to the universal past.

Lament (a Cento)

Our one forever,

when it stole through the red gates of sunset
left over from autumn, and the dead brown grass
is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song you might have been.

No longer mired in waiting to begin.

They tell us the night means nothing,
and the candles their light the light.

Tide

Coming now, in a swath of yellow,
this rising tide of dandelions.

Caves

I never said much, but always wished more.

I often walked far, yet attended to less –

Analog

It’s at times like this,
when morning slides across in its straw-yellow light –
that I am slow enticed to rise
and invite the day into my life.

Cobblestones

We played as we hopped on a path made of cobblestones,
working to miss tripping up on the wobbly ones-
teetering remnants of geological dawn.

Dyad

It’s careful planning
in open seasons,
speeding on the highway-
none are most enchanting
than sultry evenings.

Interval: A Cento

I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?

Layering

First, lay down a crumble of moments in a dish,
childhood memories and first visions evoked –
if you have them – mix them with a butter
sauce of retention.

heaven

Someday, I’ll walk in the valley
and see the high hills that surround me