Homage

(One of my colored pencil drawings)

I grew up within sight of that cemetery which held the grave of a great-grandmother I never knew ... a sister ... a brother ... and so many others who had peopled the small community in which I was growing up.

I remember the curving road which carried the funeral processions up and around ... the parked cars ... the tent covering the grave site ... the mourners gathering ... heads bowed ...

I remember the flowers ... the small flags moving gently in the breeze ... the sound of the rifles being fired in salute ... a silence as the echoes of that gunfire ebbed and flowed away ... the faltering, mournful sound of a bugle ... somewhere distant ... up there among the bluffs ...

I remember it all ... especially now that I am unable to travel back that great distance ... but I think they would understand my absence ... as they understood my presence among them then ... they would understand ...

The poem:

HOMAGE

I stand in the silence
beside the graves
on the slope of that hill
where the acorns fall
like spent minutes.

I stand, thinking
of those who helped me,
gave me that gentle push
in the small of my back,
sent me off toward places
they had never been,
would never be, sent me
off toward becoming
what I am, what I may
yet become.

I stand there thanking
them for their love.

© 2007

(Received First Place award, ByLine Contest; published in Brave Hearts, Fall, 2007)

Today's word: becoming

Grandfather Writes

Who knows? Perhaps it was my early witnessing of my grandfather's attempts at learning to write his name ... the effort he was willing to put into it so late in his life ... the obvious importance he attached to it ... 

Perhaps it was all of these - or none - that impelled me to write.


I'm sure there were other factors, too, other lessons he taught me by example, as he and his wife, my dear grandmother, undertook the task of rearing me, of making me the person I am today.


I remember watching him, first at a distance, then a bit closer, and, finally, quite near as those shaky letters took form.


I remember the feeling of shared pride in this accomplishment, in knowing that the painfully written X ("his mark") no longer need be his signature.


It was a quantum leap.


My only regret, as I say in the poem, was that I neglected to tell him how proud I was of his achievement. 

But I think he knew. I think he always knew I was proud of him.


The poem:

GRANDFATHER WRITES

My grandfather sat
in sweltering shade
beside the house,
holding a pencil stub,
practicing, practicing,
ignoring the heat,
the droning flies,
straining to focus
with dime-store glasses
while his cramping
fingers sent the pencil
crawling on the page,
strange, angular marks
scratched on the back
of the sale bill,
letters later emerging
in more fluid shapes
as he labored to write
his very own name.
How proud I felt
of his achievement.
How I wish
I had told him so. 
© 2000

(second-place winner in the 2000 Ohio Poetry Day Contest)

Today's word: quantum

Fishes and Loaves

Some mornings, when I'm just getting my eyes open, beginning to bring objects into focus, the computer decides to cooperate, and things go ... well ... reasonably well. I get something posted, and I'm off the hook for the rest of the day.

But there was one morning recently that signaled it just was not going to be one of those good days.

I'll spare you the details. Bottom line: There was no way the computer was going to let me get online. Why? That's probably destined to remain a mystery.

Just one of those things, I guess.

So what did I do? Well, this time ... I skipped the hand-to-hand combat with the desktop despot. I just didn't feel like doing all-out battle with it.

Instead, I decided just to go with the flow. I still had a guilty conscience about giving in so easily, but I spared myself tons of frustration.

So there it was, mid-afternoon. I'd had my walk. I had a nice, quiet lunch with a lady I've known since the previous century, and I'd had a nap ... -- er, an interlude of concentrated meditation in one of my favorite chairs ... and the computer seemed to have come around, reluctantly, to my way of thinking.

And there we were, finally, with a poem.

As I explained then, the "fishes and loaves" bit in the poem may be something of a stretch, but it got somebody's attention, right? They read it, liked it, published it.

Take away that part, though, and you still have the heart of what I'm trying to say: If what I have said, or what I may yet say, touches someone, helps them in some way, simply gives them a better outlook, improves their understanding of some issue, helps them to make it through the day ... then that's "miracle" enough for me.

And when a poem I've written resonates with someone in a particular way ... especially if they are moved to tell me about it ... then that's "miracle" enough for me, too.

This one was originally published in Explorer:

FISHES AND LOAVES

The fishes
of what I have said
and the loaves
of what I may yet
have to say
would never feed
the multitudes,
but, if one crust
of my writing
has benefitted
just one person,
that's miracle
enough for me.

© 1996

Today's word: miracle

Echo

(Today ... for no particular reason ... one of my watercolor sketches)

Today's little poem recreates a childhood memory of the sound of my voice coming back to me, not literally saying, "lonely, lonely," but giving me a feeling of being alone in those woods, with just that echo for company.

Of course, this was only a momentary feeling, for there were other adventures to pursue, other trails to explore, other bluffs to climb, other voices to hear ... either those voices answering me or those calling me on.

Still, recognition that, for the moment, I was all alone there, listening, not to someone else repeating what I'd just said, but to my own young voice bounding faintly back to me, was a feeling not easily forgotten.

I still think of it sometimes when I become immersed in a certain kind of quiet.

Memories! How we cherish them, make them forever ours, polish them, enhance them, store them away, pull them out to comfort us in our old age.

The poem:

ECHO

The sound of my voice
hurried through the woods,
past sandstone bluffs,
went running across
cooling ridges,
dipped into hollows,
then came back to me,
repeating
lonely, lonely ... lonely.

© 1997

(originally published in Midwest Poetry Review)

Today's word: repeating

Discontent

Today's poem, I think, states the obvious. When we've always had little in the way of material things, we're content. Ah, but when we have more, the appetite is whetted. We want more.

I was interested in the content/discontent relationship as I jotted these few words on a scrap of paper. Later, it seemed to me that it had a certain feel, a certain sound ... a poem, perhaps.

Here it is:


DISCONTENT

I was content
with what I had,
until I had more.

After that,
I discovered,
I could not
be satisfied
with any less.
© 1996

(originally published in Capper's)


Today's word: satisfied

Cold Winter Nights

Aha! Another poem about writing ... touching on a process that remains something of a mystery to me ... but also reaching the heart of the matter, I think, the satisfaction that comes from putting thoughts on paper.


The poem:

COLD WINTER NIGHTS


I have dreamed
that my poetry
might go like
wildfire lighting
the emptiness
of night, dancing
ahead of the wind,
smoke of creation,
furious burning,
rising to join
the lingering clouds,
drifting, drifting.

Ah, but a smaller
fire it is, burning 

within, chasing nothing

before it, raising
no alarms, warming
only me on these
cold winter nights
with a lamp to keep
me company, and these 

scratchings on a tiny

scrap of paper.

© 1996

(originally published in ByLine)

Today's word: wildfire

Air Like Fog

I'll always remember those bluffs, those canyons they embraced, the cool air on the trails, the kind of quiet that is only found in the woods.

Giant City State Park, located in the hills of Southern Illinois, seemed an almost magical place to go when I was a child. What a treat it was to trudge those trails, imagining all the others who had walked there before, when it was all wilderness.

As a child I relished family outings there, especially those which extended into the evening, when we'd sit around, watching the crackling flames dancing in a fireplace in one of the shelters, listening to the adults trading stories, hoping to catch some of the night sounds of the woods, too.

Later, I took my own young family there to camp, to go tramping down the same trails I had explored, to let them feast on the same sights and sounds I had enjoyed.

In more recent years, when there were just the two of us on trips back to the place where I grew up, we always managed at least a drive through the park. Those drives rekindled so many memories ... so many ...

This poem, which embodies some of those memories, is part of my first collection, Chance of Rain, published by Finishing Line Press:

AIR LIKE FOG

Morning air clings to me like fog
as I enter the deep, cool canyons
that thread the water-rounded bluffs,

where I pause for a moment to look
about, to drink an ancient silence
that flows and deepens while lichens

struggle up the pocked, towering walls,
up, up toward a swallow's nest, high
where clinging ferns await the random

blessings of summer shade and transient
yellow light; then I notice soft-edged
flecks of light dancing on the trail

where others must have stood watching,
where they may have heard, as I do now,
a crow, distant, calling them by name.

© 2005

Today's word: crackling

When, at Last, It Rains

I learned about rain, or its absence, at an early age. That happens when you grow up in a rural area. So much ... in fact, everything ... depends on rain, whether you have it or you don't, whether too little or too much.

That early experience shaped me, no doubt about it. It shaped my writing, too, when I finally took that up. It created the shape of my first collection of poems, published in 2003.

This particular poem requires little explanation, I believe. Except ... except that, while it is written as something which happened one evening, it is the sum of many evenings ... spent on the front porch, "watching the stars, counting the days since last rain."

It embodies my reaction to the ending of a long drought.

It could be taken further than that, if you wish, to a celebration, not just of the return of rain to the parched soil, but to the ending of one of the many kinds of droughts we endure in our lives.

WHEN, AT LAST, IT RAINS

I sense its talking to me in the depths
of my sleep, hear its melody settling

softly on my ear like a lover's whisper,
see it, with my mind's eye, falling

into a steady rhythm, slipping slowly
down the slope of the tattered roof

on the porch where I sat last week
watching the stars, counting the days

since last rain; then with a shout,
a slam of the screened back door, I'm

standing in the crusted yard, greeting
the rain with my arms outstretched,

dancing wildly with it, receiving its
healing kisses on my upturned face.

© 2006

(published in my first collection, Chance of Rain, issued by Finishing Line Press, 2003; included in Common Threads, issued by Ohio Poetry Association, Spring-Summer issue, 2006)

Today's word: healing

Tulsa or Bust

I've written about finding a broken pencil with only a few words left in it ... the frantic search for a scrap of paper ... any tiny piece will do ... to write down an idea before it flits away ... the hurdles, the barriers, the great feeling of success. All about writing.

It's not that I consider myself an expert on writing. Far from it. I continue to be mystified by the process ... curious about how ... and why ... poems sometimes come sneaking up on me ... but not baffled ... no, I would not say baffled ... not completely, any way.

"Tulsa or Bust" is also about writing.

As you may note, writing about writing sometimes takes some strange turns on the road to completion and eventual publication, in this instance in ByLine Magazine:

TULSA OR BUST

The paper's dry,
drier than
my driest poems,
threatening
to shatter,
turn to dust,
so I must write
quickly, softly,
cautiously,
choosing only
fluffy, light
subjects like
a "Wash Me"
written large
on the back
of a truck
lumbering
toward Tulsa.

© 1999

Today's word: lumbering

The Transient Heart

I've observed that new poems ... or their beginnings ... are like rabbits venturing out to nibble the clover at dusk ... tentative at first ... then a little bolder ...

Old poems ... at least my old poems ... wander in and out like ... well, like old men trying to remember where they left their hats. I should know ... I'm one of them now.

Today's poem "wandered in" while I was driving.

We were on our way home ... probably after attending a poetry reading ... or sitting in with a group of poetry-loving friends ... two of my most frequent alibis for "a late night out."

I was thinking, just thinking, as I drove into ... and out of ... a rain shower ... I watched the windshield wipers knocking the raindrops aside ... and then quickly running out of anything to do.

For some reason ... I guess it was all that sudden activity ... then inactivity ... on the windshield ... "The Transient Heart" came to mind ...

The poem:

THE TRANSIENT HEART

Fog had invaded
our street overnight,
leaving my car
sitting like a large,
cold melon, dripping
with potential.

Extracting my keys
from the usual
pants-pocket tangle,
my gaze drifted
to a heart-shaped
tracing vanishing
amid a cascade
of trickles
on a rear window.

A secret admirer?

More likely just
a stranger, a pupil
dawdling toward
school, little
suspecting that
such a tiny doodle
could send so many
thoughts rippling
merrily across
my morning mind.

© 1998

(originally published in Capper's)

Today's word: transient

Stolen Minutes

I write a lot about writing. It's not that I'm ... by any stretch of the imagination ... an expert on the subject. On the contrary, the process often baffles me.

Do we know all there is to know about love? Or Nature? Or God?

No! But we pursue these, and other subjects, with a passion, because we want to understand.

So it is with the subject of writing.

I write wherever and whenever I can. Afterward, I don't always understand what I've written, or why I wrote it. But I write.

I keep a scratch pad beside the bed, a pen ... actually, it once was a pen with a light in it ... just in case I wake up with some thought bugging me, something that will be lost if I don't write it down right away.

Sometimes, even that isn't enough to preserve it. My scrawl, coupled with the morning mental fog that follows a restless night, can be a tough code to crack.

Oh, well, there will be another time, another place, and maybe that same thought will pop up like a rabbit, go running across the clover field of my mind ... and maybe, just maybe, I'll grab it this time, tame it, make it mine, all mine.

But don't worry. I've learned to share. Oh, have I ever.

For example:

STOLEN MINUTES

I steal minutes when I can,
take them for my own use,
sometimes to sit thinking
my own odd-angled thoughts,
sometimes watching as a pencil
searches its way across
the untracked page, sometimes
listening to that voice,
imperceptible except to that
part of the ear that feels,
more than it hears, what is said.

© 1996

(originally published in The Christian Science Monitor)

Today's word: imperceptible

Renewal

Symbolism isn't always apparent when I take a photo. 

In this instance, I was simply prompted by the colors, the reflections, the quiet of this spot in Charleston Falls Park. 

But now I see the greening of renewal, the fallen tree both as a symbol of decay which will lead to renewal and as a footbridge, offering a choice at that juncture, of wading through the stream of events, or of taking a dry, if somewhat acrobatic, crossing ... all symbols of passages.

Appropriate, I was thinking last night ... looking at the calendar, marveling at how fast this year seems to have gone.

And it is, perhaps ... time for a moment of reflecting as we prepare to turn over that leaf on the calendar (even if we do it electronically, there's that thoughtful pause, perhaps, before we get back onto the racetrack).

But renewal, I think, can really come at any time of year ... any day ... any moment. 

End of sermon.

And now the poem:

RENEWAL

How sad sounding
the rains of spring
were, thudding
on the empty drum
of my young life.

Renewal lacked
meaning for me,
but the years
have washed away
that emptiness.

Now the song
of those gentle
drops on my roof
nurtures dreams
of beginnings
and new growth.

© 2002

(originally published in Brave Hearts)

Today's word: beginnings

Persimmons

Today's poem is about going back home, the place where so many memories were stored up, where I lived with my grandparents from pre-school days until I left to go into military service.

Those memories had sustained me all these years. 


They had been renewed with my visits back to the area, each one including a slow drive past that special place, now inhabited by others.

Then one year I returned, found the place in ruins. There had been a fire. A few years later, even those traces were gone.

This is a poem about the last time I was there, about standing there as a stranger, recalling all those early years. What wonderful innocent years they were.


The poem:

PERSIMMONS

The house, with its two bedrooms, its swing on the porch, is gone. The tar-papered garage, coal shed, the chicken house, the outhouse, all gone. I climb out of my car to have a look around. I discover, to my surprise, squared-off pieces of sandstone still there where the front walk was, but smothered now in matted dead grass.

               I turn toward where the garden was, where I spent childhood summers chopping weeds in the long, suffocating rows, picking shiny beetles and yellow-orange eggs from potato plants. It has a building on it now, property of the village, a hand-lettered sign says, a further shrinking of the site that seemed to have such endless rows then.

                                          A single cedar tree stands beside where a cindered driveway once struggled up a slight slope. Three other cedars, the lilac, two box elders, a maple, all gone.

                                                   The cemetery sexton approaches, extends a callused hand, says he saw me standing at the graves on the hill, and now here, thought I might be hunting persimmons, tells me to help myself from a tree growing back from the road, where I remember a plum tree standing.

                         We stand and talk, bridging the years between us, and he thinks he remembers when the house was still standing, but he has trouble remembering who lived there, and really can't place me.

Then, as we part, he offers persimmons again. "They’re terrible sweet this year," he says. "Not a-tall puckery."

                                     I thank him for offering, but have one final look, turn and leave without taking any.

© 2001

(received an honorable mention in a ByLine contest)

Today's word: sweet

On Waking

I grew up in hill country, where fog was rather common. I still identify waking up, the beginning of the day, with fog that lingers in the valleys.

It's something like the fog that lingers in my own head ... beading on the cobwebs there ... but that's another story.

Meanwhile, today's poem:

ON WAKING

The dense gray fog, that

silent stalker of valleys,

crept in like a dream

while we slept, lingered,

defying the sun's efforts

to take back this place

where the sassafras shares

a hillock with honeysuckle,

outdoing the dew itself,

globules riding a coolness

that speaks of changes

coming, a shift of seasons,

a briskness that will make

the covers more precious

in the morning, gentle fire

like a warm embrace when

evening brings us home.

© 2001

(originally published in Waterways)

Today's word: embrace

My Sunday Stroll

Veteran visitors to "Chosen Words" ... those with long memories, at least ... may recall having seen today's poem before.

When it was first posted here, I began with and apology: Sorry I'm late.

And I continued:

It's sometimes hard to tell, precisely, when or how "late" begins.

I think maybe it began Sunday afternoon ... and, mind you, I'm not placing any blame ... oh, no ... I'm just trying to set, in my own mind, when the wheels of progress started slipping. In my case, that may have been years ago ... but that's another story ...

Phyllis and I had planned to arrive early Sunday afternoon in the vicinity of the Dayton Metro Library, where we were going to see a short film, "Miami Valley's Favorite Poems," which features local residents reading and discussing their favorite poems.

Then ... oh, then ... we were going to listen to others reading and sharing ... in person. What an afternoon it promised to be!

We did, in fact, arrive early ... but not early enough. We headed to our favorite parking area, only to find the last ... the very last ... parking place being claimed.

No problem ... we assumed that this meant a large crowd for the poetry program ... and that's always good news. Besides, we knew of other parking spots in the neighborhood.

We simply wheeled out of there and drove on ... and on ... and on.

Four blocks later, we found a spot.

As we walked toward the library, it became increasingly clear that the crowd had not gathered for the poetry program, but for a ball game ... at a magnificent stadium ... which has inadequate parking ... but that's another story, too.

We didn't mind the stroll ... we like walking ... but it did remind me of one of my poems (somewhere below).

I don't know about the ball game, but the poetry program was great. I enjoyed all of the readings in the movie, but I was particularly moved by the reading given to Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask."

Oh, and I enjoyed the readings afterward, too ... particularly one which was done from memory (I always admire and envy people who can do that). There were some who told us they were reading before an audience for the first time ... but they seemed to have the butterflies under control ... and their readings were great, just great.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance to share a couple of my poems ... I do that whenever I see a light in a window, or a door slightly ajar. I barge right in ... but, never fear, I usually knock ... softly ... before barging in.

I shared a new one, "My Sister, Tonto," and a couple of oldies, "Hollyhocks," and "Chance of Rain" ... that last, careful readers will note, is the title poem (my lucky poem, I call it) of my first collection (Finishing Line Press, 2003).

On the way back to the car, while I was thinking about the music of all that poetry we had heard ... I couldn't help thinking about that baseball crowd, too ... and what they had missed ... really, really missed.

And now, that poem about another stroll:

MY SUNDAY STROLL

How brave the dogs
crashing into the fence,
bark-bark-barking
at me on the other side.

Are they afraid I'll jump
the barrier (at my age)
and attack them?
Does the fence make them

brave, as brave as I am?
Only inches from
flashing, pointed teeth,
agitated, syncopated paws,

those raging eyes, rising
hackles, I stroll serenely
past as superior as a cat,
knowing that the fence

will corner abruptly and they
must stop, game over,
while I, clearly the winner,
hear only the cheering
crowd as I quit the field.

© 1998

(originally published in Moose Bound Press)

Today's word: serenely