It was about that time when

he knew it was about

the time.

Waves of heat wrapped

themselves around the throat

of a late morning.

He stretches out his arm to

catch some summer, letting the

hot breezes twist through his fingers.

Sometimes hearts rattle like

the car door that, offered

enough reprieve from the summer

heat, shuts itself outright in annoyance.

Distance, like an angry hornet,

intent on its aggressive intrusion

pushes against an unyielding window.

But, given the panic level, he relents

and opens up again to the outside

where it too was vulnerable,

like prey.

And once more

a day’s penumbral gifts,

restless like the dandelion fields

become like they were before –

and he starts the car.

 

Every new generation of poets seeks to build on that which was before and push boundaries of language, metaphor and meaning. As a lover of more “classic” poets to whom we all look for guidance and inspiration, but who struggles to say things in new and fresh ways, I’ve had a love-hate affair with the beautiful pretentions of contemporary verse. Perhaps there is just too much genius for me to capture. Perhaps I am destined to speak in an older voice with newer words? Perhaps I need greater patience to see what is ever before me? I ask here some questions in verse.

a medicine cabinet

stuffed with placebo

 

a closet full of clever

 

a basket of plastic apples

half-eaten, half-observed

spit back out where they too

become poetry

 

Hermes has a message

but his feet are raw

from too much slogging

in circles through the plumage

of the self-engrossed

 

t.s. eliot squints from

the writing chair

he’s but the worn-out scrivener

too tired to interrupt

from his tidy perch

hidden beneath our dust

and pretention

 

dickinson donne blake and hopkins sprawl

themselves out prominently

under the african violet

on some coffee table

but with coffee-stained faces

that sag bored from hearing

glorified journal entries

too minute for verse

 

was it williams’ red wheelbarrow

or mary’s kingfisher

or a d. h. lawrence butterfly

or even the silence of e. e.

that first whispered

‘folly’?

 

was it too many commas

and too little rhyme

to make something live?

did the truth live among the 

dreaming gemstones

where words give birth

to flight? 

 

or maybe those words

were bled from the same

shaky pens

leaching the heart

of day-starved paper still

straining to see?

Stand still and

come what may, they tell me.

Perhaps then I will stand still,

with feet propped against

this little flock of earthen stones

and let the wind jig in my toes.

Here I will wither happily,

like the gathering ducks,  

pooled and waiting.

I’ll whistle for the twisting

roots of soil

where hide promises of cradle and tomb. 

I will vie for the sweeter attentions of

womb-sung songs with words,

cramped, waiting, unborn.

I think I’ll wait for their release

from promises

made for two

and let spring’s last push

seduce summer’s agenda.

The coughing day-brown hillside

counsels me

to be more than I was,

but less quick to

be more than what could be.

Leave that to the rest of us, they tell me.

I think I’ll just wait here.