Monday, October 23, 2017

Waiting for a word



Link to YouTube: "Waiting for a word"


Waiting for a word

I had dumped the last of the ice cubes from my glass into the sink
and turned away from where you were sitting
by the counter with a book of poems by Robert Frost.

I was half-way down the alley before I realized
just what I had said –
or hadn’t quite said.

But then I didn’t turn back to you -
so how important could those
slightly revised words on the tip of my tongue have been,
anyway …

and then I realized that I had simply forgotten
just what you had said,
in the first place –
or I.

And so as I walked, I crossed cracks in the pavement
and spotted graffiti on the brick walls.
I wondered if what we had said to each other
about poetry or anything had even mattered at all.

So often our voices seem more like background noise–
music that we don’t really even hear.
It seemed to me as I wandered among the clutter of the alleyway
as if our words were mere flames of fire vanishing in bright sunlight.

Maybe my heart might nearly have caught hold of something real in the moment
and then, rushing forward instead, I extinguished your
words with my own noncombustibles.

Perhaps to hear poetry -
or even to hear each other - we might need to shut
everything else out.

What if we just closed our eyes
and leaned back,
arms crossed
over our hearts,
falling towards unseen arms with infinite slowness –
falling in bare hope into unknown emptiness –
falling into desolation -
or - perhaps - the soul of beauty.

Or perhaps we shall simply drown in more words.

There was a penny resting on a rough limestone rock
by the river where I had finally stopped walking away.

I sat alone in my own silence under the bridge,
the sounds of cars rolling and receding
over my head.

There was a gaggle of geese across the water.
One goose stretched out its wings,
flapped them out wide in the air several times
and then settled back down to look for bugs in the grass.

A little girl in a florescent pink shirt
ran down the path along the far side of barely rippling water.
I could see people strolling along
behind her – and a forest of trees, of course.

I stood and picked up the penny
and thought again of our forsaken words.

What waits for us in the silence?

What waits for us?


Sunday, October 15, 2017

Walking back from the grocery store



Link to poem read by author


The daylight crescent moon
was slipping on down towards afternoon,
hanging by a thread from an unseen wishing star.
Tipping and tumbling,
the pale moon had spilled out most of its cream.
And now I have nearly forgotten my nighttime dream.

Instead, I turned at the near corner rather than proceeding on ahead
and shortly a silent Furbie sitting at a yard sale caught my eye -
unwinking.
The woman standing there with her coffee cup would let it go to a good home –
she said.
The Furbie had no batteries and there was no guarantee that the well-worn toy would speak –
let alone tell me what I wanted so dearly to know.
Still I let go of what I had been so wishfully thinking of for now - this moment now here.
And so with my groceries in my one hand,
I took that old Furbie up with the other empty hand -
the hand that had been holding onto thin air -
I held the thing in my hand.
And then I saw a monkey matching card game marked at fifty cents –
that too, I added.
And a stacking up wood blocks and marble toy that seemed too good to let go
for only two bucks more.
Though with hardly a second look, I passed easily on by a perfectly rusty metal chair –
also only presently priced at a mere two dollars.
It seemed as if that old chair might as well once have been painted green as blue –
but I was done looking for what I no longer really needed anymore.
But the chair might indeed once have been blue.
Who knew?

The folks running the yard sale offered to toss in a single postcard into my hands so full of little
for nothing.
The card that I had perused and put down and then had picked up anyway.
That particular postcard of a painting of pretty people partying
in a long gone night club so long ago.
And just so you know,
the painting was called ‘Nightlife.’
It had been painted well before even I had even eventually ever been born -  
painted by a painter named Motley, but what did it all matter?
And to what point – all these words spilling out of my head?
Still I added the card to my negligible burden of stuff
and I walked on.

And then there appeared somewhat rusted ahead of me –
nearly all of a maple tree’s red pointed maple leaves,
waiting on the ground for the rake …
or the wind …
or the coming winter …
or my shuffling feet ...
which ever would come first in order of happening.
Hardly questions even worth asking –
I suppose I might then well have well said.
After all, the branches above my head had just let them go –
all of the rusted red maple leaves -
the branches had just let them go.
So what choice did I ever even have?

The sky so high up above me held back the night for a morning–
the sky –
bright October sky –
sky blue.

And then once again
I was day dreaming
of you.