Author: poetryfest

by the changing light
the sway of blousy pines
all the patent beauty
that abounds, the seasons’
adornments cum destruction.

Then a spider, carnival red
nearly too small to see alights
on the lip of a white rose And
in all your years, you have never
seen a spider so rare so red.

Yet it has come your way
urging you to see the small
and smaller yet, to reminisce
Whitman’s blades of grass
beside the plebian slip of stone.

Now fanatic, frantic for all
once unseen down on hands
and knees a knowing beast
then up and up— a wingless toil
into the waiting tree.

All to praise the infinitesimal
you once so easily failed to see.

We are what we see in dreams
The mirage just out of reach, rising
Out of airshimmering heat that ripples
In waves, rising and falling,
No less of us than the sensuous touch
That pricks to life perception,
Than the honeycomb delicacy that drips
In droplets from the corners of our lips
Lapping in, consuming the sweetness

Any sense that we belong to the mountain mist
Is realized in the westward winds
Chasing the sun as it sets, holding dusk in suspension
So that we might be a little longer
So that we might stay a little longer
For a moment, we sink into stone
We feel its permanence; but we remind ourselves of mist
Breathing in the sighs of nearing night
Breathing out the wellwish of dawn
Watching for the rising eyes of stars
Pinpricks into histories of distant galaxies
We are of this to be of anything at all

What do we miss most
Before the moon rises on tired land
Casting its luminosity across the sea
Antegrade nostalgia fills the shadows
Of what will not be tomorrow
We pull the moon’s coolness across our shoulders
Joined together in the moment’s stillness
Reciting mantras of memories
For smiles and bees, for the subtle breeze
That will not be tomorrow
But we are of the hour, bodies made of dreams,
For a moment in moonlight we are there
To be anywhere at all

Wind w(here) are you coming from? Is it from the north-northeast Or south-southwest? SWoosh. Moderate breeze 17mph. Are you staying? SWoosh. Fresh breeze 23mph.

Why is it getting colder? SWooSh. (Why) are you getting stronger? SWooSh. Strong breeze 30mph. SWOOSH, SWOOSH, SWOOSH, (why) are you p-u-s-h-i-n-g me? Out/side.

Don’t you see the (LeAvE)s shaking, SiGnS shaking, and people waiting.

WhY aRe YoU MakinG iT CoLd?

High (wind) 38mph.

Wind it is no longer sunny, Out/side.

SWOOSH, SWOOSH, to the Right

… SWOOSH, toward the Left.
Now to t(h)e right r(ea)ching to the t(r)ee.

SWOOSH, SWOOSH,

SWOOSH, SWOOSH

SWOOSH,SWOOSH…

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep.

⚠️EMERGENCY ALERT!

Tornado warning in this area

till 2:20 am EDT.

Take shelter now.

Check local

Media -NWS

Oh, Sacred Mountain
Oh, lush green fields
Out of heartbreak, such delicious irony

We love the fruits
Of hard work and victory
But Franken-fruits or agent oranges
Surely end as ash in our mouths

Oh, Sacred Mountain
Oh, lush green fields
Say it, don’t spray it. Where are the bees?

Our crops may be bug-free, though something lingers
Doubt? Or a more sinister residue? I’ll pass on the Dee Dee Tea
Can’t see the forest for the trees?
We just want to keep our seeds

Oh, Sacred Mountain
Oh, lush green fields

Our heirlooms are sacrosanct

Now swallowed by a bigger fish
From Bavaria? The name rings a bell
Moral now? Hero or a heroine? Not quite
An early trademark was heroin

Oh, Sacred Mountain
Oh, lush green fields
Now bought by those who made Zyklon B

Seed sovereignty lost; nature patented
Merged with users of forced labor
Whose trucks drove under the ARBEIT MACHT FREI arch
And knowingly spread HIV

Oh, Sacred Mountain
Oh, lush green fields
How can you sleep?

Cloudy days never faze
Me in the slightest
I will not let myself forget
Those moments curled in the hammock
The feeling of Zen, as droplets fall in
Through the screen of the back porch

It’s a wonderful day, some may say
Only when the skies are clear and blue
As if it might be the sunlight
That determined a day to be good
And any cloud was just a shroud
Hoarding beams of sun from us

I don’t hate that I appreciate
Grey skies all alone
It just means I get those scenes
All to myself, because
Who else would attain that twilight before rain
If I had not been there to love it

How could I see the sky
As anything except beautiful
Regardless of moment, I won’t relent
And forsake an alluring sight
Just because it has some flaws
As if I did not have any myself

New Ice Core Analysis Shows Sharp Greenland Warming Spike
an AP headline

I have never seen Greenland
but I know it is a canvas that
painters color white; it is where

poets get lost in its blank
blizzards of words, peering
through the whiteouts,

hoping that there at least
winter will always stay old and bold and cold.

But no, they must write and paint its freezing truths
before the art of winter wanes

•

I was an artist in winter,
painting landscapes in drifts
with an icicle, sonnets of snow

foxtrotting with snowmen,
going downhill fast without
a tank of gas (a sled did just as well).

Once my wife and daughter sledded
down a West Virginia hill,
our basset hound bounding behind,

legs too short to keep up, the excited
canine dragged his private parts
through the fresh and friendly drifts.

This is winter art – galleried and
archived – until lost to the
book-burning winters of now.

•

Winter is also literature, it is
Tolstoy putting the final period to
War and Peace, for winter is war and peace,

waves of wintry wind
sweeping across the land
as it sleeps … in peace.

These classics we no longer read,
preferring the TikTok winters of chaotic
climates, which wouldn’t be so bad

but for all that lost knowledge, the library
of wintry books sitting darkened in the
sun, its doors locked, librarians laid off;

no one reads anyway.
Greenland was such a library
or maybe a monastery

where Inuit monks dipped their quills
and penned the classics of winter
before a dinner of whale blubber.

Greenland was cold for us all,
literate for the illiterate
Even if I close my eyes imagine

my boyhood winters of ’77 and ’78
I rarely state the truth: that Greenland paintings and books are through.

Diamonds across a horizon as water droplets reflect the rays cast upon them

Like miniature stars dancing across the surface in front of you

Standing, staring

Too dazzled to step forward for, after all what if even the slightest movement meant the shine would dim

As you look above the sparkles you see Apollo descending in front of you, turning his domain a rush of cherry blossom and tangerine

Colors dancing thorough the heavens above you as you still refuse to move

For in this moment as the world glistened around you and sounds of waves shifting between each other, their rhythmic movements acting as an orchestra to this scene

You paused and take a long steady breath

As the world felt open, free, and most importantly glistening once again

Abstract:

There is a smokestack
and I am two herons
gliding across the bay
that it looks over.

Under the stack’s
power plant torso,
there is a mine
that makes gold.
I shave down coal
to smudgy bits of ore,
until ash runs up my wings.

Introduction:

This is a constant thing—
Plumes from the stack
swallow up
heron mating calls
and spit birds back
as baby angels
as green comets rain down
on all the dinosaurs.

Methods:

The night before the herons—
I call it life support. Gangly wires.
traffic cones on our fists. Pretend shooting.

The buzzing drone of the parking garage
funnels drifters out to color inside the lines.

You wave down a yellow cab. We pass things
as we search for a place to watch stars.

The bank? No. The quarry? No.
How about the mall? There’s a better place.

And the highway becomes a ballad
threading through an album of tunnels.

Results:

A hubcap by the guardrail
has crushed a heron and a porcupine,

so now just guts and feathers and needles
lay where life once tried
to cross the street.

A loose ladder on the stack
as we climb halfway to the top.

A concrete awning with a fence and graffiti
to look upon the skyline.

But there is only smog.
Smog and the distant clanks
of machinery that would make
the hair on the back of a hill’s neck
stand up straight.

Discussion:

We make our money
to pay for construction
and watch birds
choke on the bay.

Appendix:

Us on the concrete
awning with a fence
and graffiti.

I can’t see any of the stars
that I should be able to see.

But the worst part about the city
is how wonderful it looks
when it’s posted up behind you.

Unsteady fawn legs, womb wet
Mass of red brown fur
Knocked down by the rough licks
Of a mother wiping away the scents of birth
Traces of the fears that may have hidden inside her

There is safety in the quiet open spaces of the wilds
In the stillness of green, brown, white-
clover dotted meadows

Suckled strength seeps in slowly but stays, holds fast.

A perilous world waits
Sharp, long ears hear – a deer runs!

Stolen love cries out for vengeance
Like wildflowers that lost their roots
Leaving behind broken patience
Where there should be holy fruits

Don’t even ask me why
As we fall apart
Don’t even try
We’ve been this way from the start

Cry out for me when it gets lonely
But don’t hold and wait
If it goes to slowly
Regardlessly loving like our fate

Don’t let emotions fly
As we fall apart
Don’t even cry
We’ve been stuck since the start

Trying so hard to let go of ourselves
Only time really tells
If the world overwhelms
As we ring our bells