Poetry

9/23/2016

Where branches find sky
Sit down, embrace the world
In shadows cast there.

9/1/2016

Cameron’s House

Down in this valley
Amongst mountains folding endlessly
Which Cherokee call Chataloochee
He came from Tennessee
He, Cameron Bean

By day we lived and ran
Night was staring at stars
Uncountable
From the house that sat
Where we now stand

Morning.
My alarm clock
Was the sound of Cameron’s cereal
Filling the bowl
Him shouting out Joe Doe!

Me, rising grumpily
Soon cheered by his calls
To little black cat Nala
And walking to practice
With him

Like the creek that runs here
Beside us
Time flows, people come
And go aside us
But we have a place, this place
That hasn’t changed

Cameron lived here
A part of him resides
In our house
And how we abide
By the way he lived:
Fearlessly.

Cameron still wakes us
In the morning
He inspires and heartens us
In the day
We share his dreams
Our job is to see them through
And live as he did, loving everyone

He met and knew.


2/07/2015

I'm Not a Tree

How would being a tree be. 
Over there, that tree. 
I'm not a tree.  
Maybe it would be nice to be one. 
To stand there in the wind, or maybe 
Not, on a windless day.  
You don't have to eat,
Rather you soak in food with your toes.  
And you breath through your leafy arms.  
But you wouldn't know that, would you, 
Because you're a tree.  
No thinking.  No sorrow.  
No boredom, even.
At least I think, 
But how would I know?  
I'm not a tree.

12/22/2014

Shower Curtain

Why, why should this curtain
Cut off me, soon clean
From sight of the world
As water, my dirt,
To drain swirls

And mist, hot cannot
Escape plastic prison's cape
Sound from the radio
Muffled, plays
Its news gurgled
Me, bent, delaying.

5/16/2014

Delicate

Young, delicate love
Fleeting glances, fragile hands
Like the first spun strands
Of a spiders web.

Slow dance, subtle at first
Shivering in the morning mist
Growing with desire for a kiss
Built with dew drops born of mist

Becoming intricate in design
Beauty held in silvery shine
Built across fence poles
This love cast in light, rainbow.

4/29/2014

Storming Heart

Arteries of lightning branching
Through veinous, vaporous cloud
Claps of thunder thumping, beating
A stormy heart in misty shroud

This billowing Love obscured
Wanting, needing to escape
A boiling tempest bursting
Passion pining to precipitate

Meeting mountain airs collide
'Cross gusty, throbbing mountainside
In the squall two hearts meet
And as lovers together beat.

4/27/2014

Old Wood

Hot smell of old, warped plywood
Sun beaten, weathered shed
Bees buzzing round two by fours; splinters
Cracked apart in cold of winter
Grass growing up through sawdust
Green against golden grain
Shafts shooting youth through
Wise old wood in pain.


4/25/2014

Nap

Go back to sleep
Return to counting sheep
Let your head hit the pillow
Or if you're under a willow
Put your back on the trunk
Unless you're recovering
From lunch; then 
Set your self on a couch
It's ok if you slouch
After all it's a nap
Which you deserve 
With all the crap
You put up with in life
And remember to smile
Because it may take awhile
But your mind will be clear
And the worries in life
All disappear.



4/15/2014

Love of Breeze

Are you going to sail over me?
Your eyes, they glide, like cutting bow
Cross and through rollers
Leaving boiling turmoil in wake, forgotten.
White spray, flashing rainbows
Swept up and carried leeward
With the ripples, the patterns
Left by the breeze; me, that surely
You cannot be without.

Now doldrums, glassy water, a mirror
You peer into, drifting, without
Belly in the bosom of your sails.
Far off, almost to the horizon dance
White caps, free, calling.
All tides and air
Have left you now.

To lean far again to lee
With taught, humming sheets
You need only to tack about
And sail back to me, breeze.

4/08/2014

Moss

Out of moist, musky dampness
Drive green tendrils, soft
Like hair almost
The scalp being a boulder
Moss, defying age, loss, older.
Shoots are sparse fragile things
But tell of the coming of spring.

4/04/2014

Love of Poetry

Four days and nights
Into dimming light
I've fumbled with my pen
And nothing written,
My mind being smitten

The page a foe, not friend
Then you walked in front of me
And words, once enemies
And sentences, seamlessly
Returned to praise you,
Poetry.

3/25/2014

Wind In Trees

Wind howls amongst
Trees that bend, sway
Leaning in to whisper
Branches tangle, scrape
Timber slow, murmur
Saplings bow, rumor.

1/29/2014

Pasture

Grass, endless lawn
Sweeping forever up and out
Meeting, along a proud stand of pines,
The Sky.

Tangled, matted, foaming, frothing
A rippled sea of sod
In this pen unbounded we are
Like horses let to pasture.

9/29/2013

Lines

The thinning carpet has lines in it.
They alternate in brown, gray, and white,
Running across the room
I think they continue under the walls.

I lay down normal to the lines
But they take me, gliding,
With them instead.
I can't get away.

Coming to the wall I am
Halted by hollow plaster,
The corner there pressing, confining.
Suddenly I fall up the wall.

No lines here, I move
Up, down, across, free.
Now the wall fades.
I can descend or climb through it.

One million dimensions
Reveal themselves to me
Unimaginable moments before
When I lived amongst the lines, lies.



8/12/2013

Surreal Sunset

There is a time in the day
Perhaps three or four minutes in length,
When conditions are right.

Evening, as the last light
Filters down through still leaves,
Foiling everything it touches.

A parting of thick, low clouds,
Their edges ablaze with oranges and reds,
Washing the air with a sick, surreal glow.

In this moment time hangs between
Relieving dusk
And the haven of night.

6/19/2013

Time is not a real thing
A measure of comings and goings,
Time can be bent, relaxed, and compressed

A man, a life, a world

Are everything and nothing to Time
Age imperceptible and immeasurable.

Man sees only what he can see, 

Feels only what he can feel,
And waits for only that which he can wait for.

3/12/2013


The old man kindles the spirit fire

Pausing with tinder in each hand
He cautions us to be wary.
For the spirits live in the newspaper stories
From four days ago, he says.
I am afraid his beard will ignite.

He knows more in a look

Than I'd ever.
Dragging the hemispheric metal cage
He keeps the spirits in the flames
What about those getting in I ask
He looks, says nothing, and walks off

He'd spent an hour preparing his work

Leaving it for us to tend
Later we leave as embers burn orange
Giving their last light and warmth
I'm still thinking on the old man and his beard
And what he gave us that night.

2/27/2013


Listen to the words others speak

For they tell of sounds and sights past
Blood red is the truth of history 
Foaming up, now receding behind us

Think on days made memories

Time used up and gone now
For good or hurt cannot be seen
Until we reach our ends

The world was lonely then, 

Is now and will be then
Pale shadows amble from dawn to dust
But briefly shine in momentary gust.


2/26/2013

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

The wind stirs sleepily
He nears the church steeple, towering
Silent now as mist rolls past heavy.

Through the old wood gate, creaking

Down the hill as orange light hits dark tree tops
Now his shadow strengthens, or rather
The world brightens around it.

Low land cold air chills him, tensing

Dew clings to shafts of grass safe from the glow
A startled bird sings shrilly, lonely
No one returns its call.

On the trail forward springs a fox, cunning

An omen there but gone with a flash of fur
The runner breaths rhythmically, waking
The day begins.

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