May 30 2021
….Unless you like poetry.
These next six poems were all submitted to the Poetry Society of VA Annual Contest, of which there are about 25 categories. Suffice to say, I did not win anything, not even an honorable mention. Oh well. I was very proud of this group when I made the submission at the end of January, and remain so. I hope you enjoy them.
Year’s End 2020
In this time of isolation
due to a rampant disease,
you and I have managed well,
introverts that we are,
already addicted to quiet time,
each other’s company, and long,
fresh-air walks in all weather.
We’ve been lucky—family closest
staying put and staying well –
but the losses of those we count
as friends have been fierce:
a young wife, a husband,
three fathers and two sons,
stalwarts all of our small town —
a hemorrhaging of life
lost not to a virus, but to a
world that turns on its own
relentless axis —
A king tide of souls, loved,
with consciousness and being
now abruptly withdrawn,
leaving behind edgeless
rippling flats of memory.
But if we can bear it,
and gaze unflinchingly into
the faithful winter sun,
those flats will gleam
with an entire spectrum of light–
all that the heavens can possibly muster –
cauterizing our hearts and
washing the sandy earth
on which we kneel
pebble-smooth and clean.
Benediction (The Struggle is Real)
In the darkness
of January’s overnight hours
snowflakes catch the slipstream of gravity
for the long journey earthward
holding their perfect form
before dissolving on contact —
a vanishing balm of blessing
unseen and unknown but needing
no witness to make more real.
Introductions
On a gray, late-January day
wind is just wind —
cold and ungracious,
no kinship, no romance,
even when welling up
from the south
heralding sunshine
and brief warmth.
It arrives unbowed
and will remain so
until April, when it
softens and becomes
almost flirtatious,
daring to flip open
your raincoat and
slip an ushering hand
around your waist,
revealing the slightness
that is you to the world.
Anthropomorphism
Herons and egrets are a solitary lot,
wandering the quiet wild spaces with ease,
the company of dissimilar creatures
more than enough.
If they had the capacity
they would be writers and poets,
strummed like instruments
by life’s rigor and contemplation,
compelled to tell stories
about distance, effort and raising young —
without exaggeration or deception
and refraining from the confessional,
for among their readers,
loneliness, loss and unsated hungers
would be a given.
Cathedral
When I cannot be in your arms
I want to be in the cathedral of trees —
a thousand golden crowns
dancing overhead —
all paths to and from lost
beneath layers of leaves
mirroring the splendor aloft
that reaches for heaven
with beseeching branches —
soon to be stripped bare
of all but their reverence.
Radiance
“I must go down to the seas again/
to the lonely sea and the sky…”
John Masefield, Sea Fever
How many mornings,
afternoons and evenings
must I have spent
overlooking Newport Bay
and the surf-splashed jetty
in the satisfying company
of China Cove’s quiet pagoda
with Masefield’s words
to accompany me?
Many – far too many —
every chance I got — when
caught in a beautiful place
that belonged to me by birth
but not by sensibility.
An alien in my native land,
a southerner in the wrong south,
I found my home in a place
of regular rhythms, fulsome trees
and kind hearts — then ventured out
and found others, until one day,
I stood over that cove —
the pagoda long gone —
and lost myself to the beauty
of what was once my sea.
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