There's Fire Tonight

Today's poem is about picking up coal from alongside the railroad tracks. It's about the crackling fire those found lumps of coal brought to us during what we knew then, and recall now, as "hard times."

It was an adventure for a young boy growing up in the care of his grandparents. It was a lesson never forgotten.

But the careful reader will also note that it's a poem about writing. Take a look at the opening: "Words." Hold on to it as you follow the thread of the poem.

I do feel that words are, indeed, like those lumps we thrust into that burlap bag. They have the potential for heat, if we lay them carefully in the stove ... and ignite them with our own inspiration ... fan them into flame.

They will bring us comfort on long winter nights. They will warm our hands ... maybe our hearts, too.

This one was originally published in Southern Humanities Review, and has become the title poem of a manuscript in search of publisher:

THERE'S FIRE TONIGHT

Words, how like
the lumps of coal
Grandma and I found
along the tracks
where hopper cars,
lurching, loping
up the long grade
toward Cobden,
had dropped them,
each a gift
in our dirty hands,
holding promise,
as they were thrust
into the burlap bag,
of shared warmth,
soft, crackling song,
sooty smoke rising,
telling our world
there's fire tonight,
all's well.
© 1997

Today's word: lurching

Searching for Words

I'm always searching for words, it seems.

I see something that's new to me, and I search for a word or phrase which will help me to store the image of it ... that first impression ... somewhere that I can retrieve it ... so I can tell somebody else about it.

At my age, retrieving it is sometimes a problem ... but I don't let that keep me from trying to store it where I think it will be easy to find again. I do keep trying.

When I write ... which is often, for I'm always jotting things down on little scraps of paper ... I search for words then, too ... casually on first writing something ... I'm not looking to make a photo-realist image, but to form a rough sketch, something to build on later.

And when later comes ... time for revising ... that's when the really serious search begins.

As this poem began toying with me, it occurred to me that I might find some magic in those early words which first presented themselves to me ... "that sprang upon me like playful kittens."

I try to maintain as much of that as possible, that element of surprise in hearing something for the first time, or seeing something through new eyes, as though for the first time.

I think it must have been a winter evening when I first began writing what would become "Searching for Words."

I must have been reminded of other moonlit winter evenings when the wood smoke rose lazily from chimneys, and I knew that dreams were visiting the residents while I trudged the lonely road toward home.

I hope you search for words, too. I hope you'll find a lot of beautiful, soothing ones ... words you'll want to keep ... and share with others ... like seashells, or beautiful stones discovered during a walk along the beach. Happy hunting!

And now, the poem:

SEARCHING FOR WORDS

I search the silent
corridors of my mind,
seeking words that
softly sought my young
ears, that sprang
upon me like playful
kittens, turning
into songs, casting
their spell, as haunting
as the thin gray curl
and reach of wood smoke
on a winter evening.
© 1999
(originally published in Midwest Poetry Review)

Today's word: kittens

Reflecting

In the early days, when I received an acceptance of something I'd written, I felt like dancing on the table in celebration.

In all honesty, I never did dance on the table (or anywhere else, for that matter). But I did feel like dancing, and the table seemed the appropriate place ... then.

I still don't dance on the table.

But then I got an e-mail from Finishing Line Press, publisher of Chance of Rain, my collection of poems all about rain, or its absence ...

Gist of the e-mail: "Congratulations! Your book is now listed on Amazon.com ... "

Oh, wow! I was so excited about that ... and I still am ...

But now, the poem:

REFLECTING

Winter rain trickles
and skitters this evening
as it travels down the slope
of my skylight, like spent
minutes picking their way
through another lonely
night, or a speckled mirror
held to reflect the tangled
yarn basket of my mind.
© 2003
(One of my poems from Chance of Rain, a small, limited-edition collection, issued by Finishing Line Press)

Today's word: dancing

Purple

(Today's photo is a worm's eye view of some hyacinths which caught my attention while I was walking in Lincoln Park)

Memory is such a part of poetry - whether of something seen or envisioned, whether long ago or just moments earlier. Memory plays its role.

In this instance, the memory was implanted so long ago I don't know exactly where or when I saw the sofa sitting on that front porch. It had to have been in my childhood, which would have placed it somewhere in a small town in Southern Illinois.

I remember how the light played across it, how I wondered what its story was, why it was sitting on that porch, neglected, but not really abandoned.

That image stayed with me, followed me, all these years until, finally, I put it to paper and, in doing that, gave it a life of its own. Perhaps it will now stir some memories for someone else, this old sofa "where so many secrets still lie ... "

The poem:

PURPLE

Deep-purple couch sitting alone
in the darkness of the front porch,

lamplight threading a cracked
windowpane, settling like dust

across your back, cushions askew,
butt-sprung, cold, where suitors sat

enduring eternity, waiting, waiting
for that moment that never came,

where others, home from the wars,
found prickly refuge in your embrace,

slept nights away, bone-weary, safe,
where the sick found solace,

baby first slept, generations of cats
yawned, stretched, sank regal claws,

where so many secrets still lie
like lost coins, just beyond reach.
© 1998
(originally published in Potpourri)

Today's word: lamplight

Ordinary Things

(Another of those "ordinary things" which catch my attention when I'm out walking - the shadows of bare limbs falling across a walkway, trees catching the sun in the background - a tranquil scene which may lead to a poem ... or just a feeling of quiet contentment)

Rejection ... in the form of those little impersonal notes which accompany your poems when they come back from some distant editor ... is so frequent that it's almost expected.

Oh, I send out the best work I can do ... at the time ... and I always think I've matched it with the perfect place for it to be published ... but there are so many factors at work: The sheer numbers of people who write poetry, the limited number of pages in each publication, the timing, the subject matter.

Then there's the subjective way in which the flood of incoming work is measured ... as, I suppose, it should be. The editor, after all, is likely struggling for survival, too.

I've come to expect that most of my submissions will be rejected. Of course, this makes the acceptances that much more sweet ... more worthy of celebration, though I don't dance on the table as much as I once did.

In this pursuit of acceptance here and there, I accept the odds, I keep trying to improve my writing ... and the odds ... and life goes on.

Once in a while, in all of this turmoil, there comes a little surprise.

I recall how one editor had scrawled something about "mundane treatment of ordinary subjects" on the rejection slip which accompanied my returned poems. I recall that note ... and I wish I could recall the name of that editor.

I would like to thank him for giving me ideas for two more poems, today's "Ordinary Things" ... and another, "In Praise of the Mundane" ... both off which were published ... elsewhere.

Today's offering:

ORDINARY THINGS

If my daily walk could take me
far enough from where I live,
I might discover something worthy
of collecting and preserving.

Instead, I find a squirrel's
nest, abandoned, being parceled
by the wind, a remnant of string
lying in hopeless tangle,
fragments of eggshell left like
bits of sky on gritty gray
sidewalk, a cat sunning, scattered
toys, telling me that children
are nearby, perhaps watching
as I pick my way through.

Such ordinary things, trickling
through the fingers of my memory
even before I get home, but while
I have them they are treasure.
More than that, food for my soul.
© 1998
(Originally published in A New Song, the poem is now part of my third collection, entitled Wood Smoke, which was published recently by Finishing Line Press)

Today's word: ordinary

Night Echoes

How vivid the memory is of those trucks "grumping and rumbling" in the night.

I don't recall exactly when it was, but I remember being bedded down for the night in a motel at Terre Haute. Then I heard them. It sounded like a parade of trucks, although there weren't nearly that many ... and there wasn't exactly a steady stream of them.

I recall getting up to take a look. There was a single, huge dump truck grinding past on the highway. I don't recall which highway, but It seems to me that it was a north-south route.

I went back to bed.

The trucks kept rolling. It wasn't a loud noise, but it seemed persistent ... and it seemed that there was just enough of a grade in the road, right beside the motel, that their grumbling ... all of them ... increased right there as they shifted to a lower gear and went on climbing the hill.

I got back up ... jotted down my impressions ... and went back to bed. And really slept then. Oh, did I ever!

The poem, which later became part of my first published collection:

NIGHT ECHOES

Mud-laden trucks
grump and rumble
outside my room,
hauling mounded
loads of quiet
down the highway,
letting it spill
in the darkness,
come rolling back,
thunder’s echo
muffled, distant,
washing across
this emptiness
like surf crashing
on my pillow.
© 2003
(originally published in Chance of Rain, issued by Finishing Line Press, 2003)

Today's word: crashing

Memories

When I first posted this sidewalk art and my little poem on "Chosen Words," this is what I said:

There's no mistaking the signature on the art.

Tom, it appears, was the moving force behind this work, a collaboration with Alan, who is one of his uncles, and with Grandma Brimm, who was being honored on this particular Mother's Day weekend.

When the poem, "Memories," presented itself to me, this photograph of their Saturday afternoon efforts seemed the obvious choice to accompany it.

Here are memories in the making ... the vulture, the butterfly, the crouching creature (a lizard) ... and, of course, the signature.

We have stored up so many similar memories. We look forward to slipping them out to savor them later, at a time when they will taste the sweetest to us.

And we hope that when TOM is ten times seven he will savor them, too ... that he will discover the sweetness of memories from that weekend when he honored his mother, Kathy, and one of his grandmothers, too ... and delighted them both with his art.

(Tom, by the way, is still pursuing his interest in art)

And now the poem:

MEMORIES

Resting, I search
the honeycomb
of my mind
for warm memories,
and those I find
have grown sweeter
than I ever
dreamed they could.
© 1995
(originally published in Capper's)

Today's word: honeycomb