Morning has swallowed whole the night

On August 28, 2013August 28, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

and out of its belly is teased the day,

dripping with invitation to ingest what gifts

are ripe and waiting. The tree of good and best

sits silently in the midst of the garden

and beckons me to investigate. Look

not for the reddest, brightest fruit,

blushed and bursting, it says.

Look instead for the fruit which looks for you,

pregnant with promise. Let it choose you.

Bite into it with abandon and let God anoint you

with the juice running down your chin that aims first

at your mouth, too full to speak,

then to your heart, hiding beneath your shirt

and to your feet, now wet and sticky but ready

to leave this place where other mouths

are hungry for fruit.

Sometimes the evening speaks loudly

On August 26, 2013August 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic, Words...always words1 Comment

“…The stars need darkness or you would not know them.” –Dorothy Trogdon, poet

The day presents itself to him at an unacceptable hour. The time of night when end of one day hasn’t completely surrendered to another. But the early thin place wasn’t an enemy by any means. The typhoon-like week that led to this moment hadn’t finished depositing its day-timer detritus. He is tired, but a certain contentment holds sway and hunkers down in the deep parts that make themselves known at such times.

Faces like so many stars in a sequined heaven begin to seep into his memory. As though bobbing up from underwater, one face after another implores to be remembered, mentally photographed and then, in the quiet of gifted moments, developed into softly gilded perfection. Was this mere whimsy, the unfettered gloating of overly romanticized ideas? Life was good. Why then the unasked for intrusion of yesterday’s communion? Couldn’t the wealth of immediacy be enough, just this once? Is then always so much better than now?

He wondered to himself whether he should banish such ghosts or to allow them free passage through heart hallways a little dusty that often smudge such images. He chooses the latter and, for a few moments, coffee now cold in his cup, joins them in meandering parade through the ballroom of his conscious. Through closed eyes he draws deep breaths of the night air and touches each face. But in doing so, they vanish, leaving only his finger pointing heavenward – the place where each of them are called. The place to which they call others.

Then there is clarity. Without the backdrop of the deep black night, stars are not stars. Without stones, the river doesn’t dance. Without falling leaves, the wind makes no sound and the world is just a little sadder. He smiles, dares a sip of cold coffee, and steals another breath from the evening, not so quiet after all.

Image: www.pptbackgrounds.net

A night with friends

On July 25, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic5 Comments

The evening, purple and plush, is tender.

Her breezy suggestions of tales, told late

well, often, and loudly from tables

laden with good friends. The fingerprinted

beer glasses fill with memories, plump with

well worded love, seed the new day

and push just a little harder toward joy.

Glasses emptied, giggles abounding

posture themselves as little brother

to guffawed grins on quivering chins,

twin bearers of gladness and gloom.

For soon the night must absolve

the room of her secrets, and

invite the neighbored goodness back

to places now refreshed in

the exercise of lingering laughter

late and perfectly balanced,

found only among the best of friends.

Found in lost time

On July 23, 2013July 23, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic6 Comments

The periphery is the place

where dreams are most visible.

On the edges, frayed and wrinkled,

my subdivided realities

open wide and spread out

before inquisitors pressed in close

with noses against the dirty glass

of my best kept secrets.

Let’s confirm that hope

spy that joy,

pin down that lie,

open that pain.

If one can make hiccups

in time and place, perhaps

there can be rejoined

the fragile messes,

the intractable chaos,

the static imperfections

with the faux pardon of time.

Drive the head of this nail

of perceptions through

already connected wood

with the hammer of bad choices.

What’s left is just one more nail.

Still, my need for love,

unprovoked and misunderstood,

is best found in lost time.

Photo: www.didyoumakethat.wordpress.com

“There once was a girl from Nantucket…”: why I write poetry

On July 19, 2013July 21, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

“There once was a girl from Nantucket…”

There are as many ways of self-expression as there are people…self-expressing. One can say something in many and varied ways. There, see? Unlike other, non-poetic forms of writing, poetry evokes rather than explains. Now, good prose also can do this. But, somehow, there is an economy of words and focus of emotion in poetry, a kind of escalator narrative that moves us up and down at will, that prose cannot seem to create in as neat and succinct a way. Prose tells the story of our life on paper. Poetry crunches up the paper and then makes sense of the wrinkles. Prose seeks to pull petals off the flower and, in deconstructing it, find it. Poetry imagines the soul of the flower and, in ways both sensory and direct, introduces us. Prose tells us how beautiful the flower is. Poetry tells the flower how beautiful we are. In a real sense, poetry is a flower, a kind of natural face given to the mystery of our being.

Poetry doesn’t take us from A to B. It asks why we even need B in the first place, or at least takes the longer, scenic route. Prose needs readers to engage with its detail and form. Poetry needs but to exist since it is both beauty and the suggestion thereof. It is an invitation not to read but to be read. “If a tree falls in the forest” is a question we ask ourselves. The poet shows how cool a silent tree really is. It is the art of words rather than the science of language. Moreover, the lucidity and dominance of its spatial, nuanced non-rhetoric leaves a big, front door through which those of us thirsty for something other than exactitude and definition may find our Narnia. A good narrative will give us the tale, the wardrobe, the place. Poetry helps us live the tale. Prose ushers us to turkey dinner at Grandma’s house. Poetry ushers us to Grandma whose heart was the crucible of love out of which came our dinner.

I write poetry because, for me, it is prayer. It allows extreme right-brained thinkers like myself to engage with words in more dancelike fashion, treating them more like lovers than telemarketers. I can simply close my eyes and, through the mystery of my subconscious, knit to God’s own being, walk through the veil of here to there without having to explain why or even how I got there. Poetry is perfect for people who can’t figure things out but for whom the things are just as cool unfigured out. Mystery wins every time.

If you had no idea what the hell I just wrote, you’re not quite ready for poetry…just yet.

Photo: www.blog.ted.com