Hello Friends and Neighbors and Poetry Lovers Everywhere.
I promised a Poetry Blog site and, by golly, I'm delivering. Here are three little introductory poems for you to read in a thoughtful way. Then you can tell me you're heading off to something a whole lot more entertaining. Or you can offer encouragement and beg for more. Or you can feign interest while remaining indifferent. Enough said. Poetry now.
Making Firewood
When
the maul falls
With
just the right force
A
section of tree trunk
Divides
cleanly
Into
chunks of fuel
But
as the hours pass
And
lifting
Stacking
And
swinging becomes
More
difficult
Cleaving
is less precise
Knots
in the wood
Turn
into deflectors
Of
perfect cuts
Power
generated by
The
physics of motion
And
weight
Levers
and fulcrums
Slows
and weakens
Break
time arrives
Cold
beer is the reviver
Then
back to work
Rosemary
She
was brittle and dry
Wouldn’t
cry, laughed
Like
oil burning
In
a hot skillet
As
a first love
She
was the best
And
a broken heart
Was
guaranteed
That
early pain
Prepared
a young boy
For
the softer hurt
Coming
down the road
Softer
hurt because
No
ache is stronger
Than
love’s first ending
References
Walking
through shaded streets
Of
a seaport town
I
was grabbed by the clutching
Fingers
of an intense
Pale
skinned young man who babbled
On
and on
Something
about an albatross
And
a ghost ship
Of
course he was crazy
Perhaps
he spent too much time
In
one of the nearby opium parlors
I
don’t know, I brushed him off
But
I was soon back on the steamer
Headed
for the canal passage
When
the writer fellow who was chasing
The
cook’s helper ran screaming
And
bleeding from the galley to crew’s
Quarters
where he shoved
His
papers into a duffle clambered up
The
decks to the open air
Stepped
up on the rail and jumped
We
didn’t really try to stop him
He
wasn’t much of a looker
And
spoke only when spoken to
Another
loser lost at sea
As
the freighter squeezed itself
Out
of the canal into the Pacific
I
considered the journey
Was
it all posturing, was I making
Progress? Imitation is flattering
And
I paid obeisance to many
As
my fingers pecked their way
Across
the keyboard again
And
yet again
Finally
my Idaho was reached
And
the great man sat in his foyer
With
the shotgun pressed to his
Palate
and my imitation found
Its
limit and with that the journey
Began
again, this time going
Solo,
that much harder path
Where
scrambling for footholds
Is
never ending but where failing
Doesn’t
have to be fatal
So there you are. A threesome. Now go read a good poem by a big time poet.
