Poem: Who is This Him, Anyway?

 Who is This Him, Anyway?

This modern age seems to question 

Our very language plaguing us

With darkness and misunderstanding

Suggesting it’s a culture war,

But can the artist formerly 

Known as Prince stop the Tweets

Of a president who trumped 

Us all with his election deceit?

Can X save us from

Happy Holidays of Starbucks’

Black coffee that makes us woke

To the posts of the singular They

Who demands to be one

Of which no one can determine?

If we change the language 

While we sleep, will we awake

Without culture? And why,

Pray tell, in this day would any

Woman want to be anything 

But They so that their body

Is their own, not the object 

Of the Him? Who is this Him

Anyway?

August 2023

About This Poem

I wrote this a little over a year ago and it could use some tweaking, but you can see the politics of our time in it, the looming presence of "culture" wars, politics, and the corporate world. Most of it is fodder for the press and doesn't have great impact on our daily lives, unless you watch the news or read it. Then your blood pressure goes up. So I like to just play with it so that my blood pressure drops.

Poem: Just Water a Bit and Let Me Be

Just Water a Bit and Let Me Be

Each day the morning arrives a little

Later, a little cooler. The leaves are

Just a little off color, not much—

Edges of trees lose their green to tints of

Yellows, reds, oranges, and even some brown.

I find myself sweeping them off the steps

And patio every time I go

Out the door. Flower pots still

Need water and I oblige them but one

Morning I know they will be blackened

And I’ll be pulling them up and storing

Pots for spring somewhere in the mess from

Summer—hoses, pots, fertilizers, tools

That do me no good in drifts of snow.

I feel a little like those flowers these days

With all the doctor’s visits for my blood,

My heart, injections in my fading eyes.

They seem to be pruning me, a squeezing 

Out just a few more blossoms, knowing it

Won’t be long before the impending frost

Beckons to me, blackens me to where I 

Bloom no more. 

                           But just because I have less

Time, I know that my green’s fading and

I don’t have any problems letting my 

Colors show—oranges tinged with aches, yellows

Curling at the edges of my moods and

Sometimes bright red outbursts that drive the greens

Away. But they’re just tinges now, nothing 

Much to show I’m anything less than green

In my prime having plenty of summer

Left and plenty of flowers to spare you.

So, just water a bit and let me be.

September 2023

About This Poem

This poem is entirely about myself. I used the early autumn as backdrop to the reality of my aging. I love gardening and, like the plants in my gardening, I need a little tending. But, also like the plants in my garden, I'm not going to last forever and I feel it more now than I ever have before. The photo is of me sitting on a platform from an old building while waiting for the cross country race to begin. I no longer coach, but I volunteer. The monochrome is because I was just fiddling with my phone camera.

 

 

Poem: The Thirst For Poetry

The Thirst for Poetry

At times I have immersed myself in poetry

As if I were diving into a lake

Fully cognizant of my existence

In the pools of beauty

But unconcerned about anything

Except the waters of soothing calm.

Each day I try to capture a drop 

Of that lake—to just take a sweet taste—

And let the romance overtake me.

For the most part these days

It’s just a glimpse into a droplet

Of a much larger body so fluid,

Not stiff and clumsy like my aging body.

Sometimes the reality of my day to day

Eclipses that great body of water

So that I hardly see the Frosts,

The Cummings, the Hughes, the Plaths,

The me that longs to drink forever 

From the lake—no, sea—of poetry

So that I’m left with the musty scent

Of used books and the scribblings

Of troubled minds, adventurous minds,

Just human minds moldering

In a dried out bed shrunken to cracked mud

Empty of metaphor, meaning, even the lists

Of a Whitman singing America.

But even Homer’s unfaithful Odysseus

Adventured across the seas

Only to find, after all those years,

His ever faithful Penelope.

So I will continue to pray for rain

To use again in a poetic refrain.

September 2023

About This Poem

I honestly don't remember what caused me to write this poem, except the fact that I feel like I never get enough poetry. I love it and, in spite of feeling I don't get enough, read and write it every day. But there is just so much. And maybe I'm just being like Odysseus, adrift on the sea looking to find my faithfulness in a single poem? I don't know.
 

Poem: Crystalline Flakes Fall Down from the Sky

Crystalline Flakes Fall Down from the Sky

Crystalline flakes fall down from the sky

Melting all colors of the auroral world

Causing men to scurry about to ply

The piles from the roads and the holds

So children can catch buses for school 

And the work of our lives can continue

Making none the wiser, perhaps the fool

That the world is frozen and should be subdued.

Awake from your slumber, plows to prepare

Light the fires to warm the buildings

So that they don’t become tombs so spare

That no one can cause the bells to ring.

We all know it’s true that frost bodes death

Yet here we are alive as ever we have been.

Shine the lights, let them sparkle as our health 

Cannot be frozen like the rain has been.

No, we cannot slumber beneath the snow.

We must dig out, not let this be our grave

But awake to the morning so we grow

Toward the sunlight beyond the cloud’s maze.

Rouse the children, fill them with nourishment

So they stay warm and strong throughout the days.

They must carry on as we know they’re meant

Because when has sun not broken the maze?

Keep the lights shining through the frozen night

And let the children in the snow just play

Because somewhere out there the sun is bright 

And the old man, Death, cannot have his way.

We all know it’s true that frost bodes Death

Yet here we are alive as ever we have been.

Shine the lights, let them sparkle as our health

Cannot be frozen like the rain has been.

So children catch buses for school

And the work of our lives can continue

Making none the wiser, perhaps the fool,

That the world is frozen and should be subdued.

Crystalline flakes fall down from the sky

Muting all colors of the auroral world

Causing men to scurry about to ply

The piles from the roads and the holds.

December 2022

About This Poem

I was trying to be traditional in style in this one while making a point of the joy of winter in spite of what it may represent. While it does forbode death, it can be beautiful and fun. It may take some work to be that, but it is worth the effort and it keeps the doldrums at bay. It is a modern sort of "Snowbound" by Whittier. The photo is from somewhere here on the Palouse.
 

Poem: Slipping Away

 

Slipping Away

It slips through your fingers

Like sand on the shore,

Laughing at you when

You grasp for more.

If you look away 

Even briefly it is gone.

Leaving you bereft of your own

Senses. This time it’s a friend

Maybe even a lover

But have no fear, brother,

For soon it will be you

No matter what you do.

Remember that soap opera,

Like Sands Through the Hourglass,

So are the Days of Our Lives?

No matter all the fantasy

This part was true,

And taunting of you

As you let the sand trickle

Watching rubbish

Steal the very sands of time

From you, while you sat

Enthralled, not even feeling

It slip away

Stealing all that you had come

To love, not even knowing.

But sand and time,

So plentiful may seem,

Yet only a little of either

Can you briefly hold.

July 2023

About This Poem

I don't know what inspired this poem, but I know that many of the tombstones in the older cemeteries like this one in Boston have epitaphs and grim reapers and hourglasses to remind you that your time is limited. In the cemetery it can seem grim, but it really is something good to remember. I think I could probably improve upon this poem a bit, but for now I'll share this version.

248. Grateful for US Regionalism

I don’t know if I have written this before in my American gratitude list, but as it is the season of gratitude, I’m going to write about the distinct regionalism in our great country. There are a zillion examples in topography, speech, climate zones, etc. The American West, where I’m from, is a great landscape of wonders formed by the Rockies and the other mountain ranges. The Southwest is warmer and dry from the variety of deserts and because of the weathering patterns it has amazing rock formations from the Rio Grande to the Colorado. The Northwest has its own desert effects on the Columbia Plateau and the Snake River Plain and the mountains here are heavily forested, often temperate rain forests. And then there are the plains states between the Rockies and Appalachia—beautiful windswept grasslands and farmlands. The eastern seaboard has the gentle Appalachian Mountains and Gulf states are sub-tropical with warm waters and a variety of plant life not to be found anywhere else.

Then there are the quirks brought by the varieties of peoples who settled there. Here in the Northwest we have creeks, like much of the country, but New England has brooks and the Dutch settled Hudson Valley and parts of Pennsylvania have kills. We all have our regional names inspired or given by the indigenous people of where we live from Washington’s Yakima Valley to the southern Chattahoochee River. The blending of languages all brought together into the ever-evolving English that we speak throughout the nation bring us a gorge in the east to a Grand Canyon in the west. In parts of Pennsylvania people call others youse guys, while in the south it becomes you all, or y’all. Our accents and landscapes give way to foods that also were inspired by not only the natives of the land, but the people who invaded so that maple syrup of New England has become generally American just as the squash and pumpkins of the south and corn of who-knows-where have become part of our unique national heritage. This heritage we sing of and riff throughout our Jazz and Blues, our Country Western, our Rap and our collective being from Florida to Alaska and Hawaii to Maine, logging, fishing, mining, farming, manufacturing, and weaving into this amazing quilt of 50+ pieces that make us both Idahoan, Floridian, Hawaiian, New Yorkers, Virginian—Americans. This is one of those e pluribus unum things that makes me so thankful for my country and so proud to be an American.

 

Poem: If Life Be Love

If Life Be Love

To wake myself, wondering why 

I am so much less than I ought to be.

I wish to escape myself, my self-deceit,

My corporeal existence, aging, wrinkling.

Aching existence. Yet what is escape?

The mountains shadow me with all

My imperfections. I climb their heights

To see who I really am, exposed

To myself, to the world. Am I alone

In what I see, frail and broken?

Exposed on the lofty peaks I feel

The lightening rage as it strikes

My body, toppling me to the ground

As my hair stands on end, throwing me

Off the cliff only to have my heart

Restart again. Perhaps I think I’m ugly,

Worthless of all this pain.

Perhaps I have fallen from heights

Only to be born again,

Shocked into a new man.

In this forested grove below the summit

I see what I am and from

Where I did plummet.

I am alive in all this pain and joy

And I cannot die if life be love.

August 2023

About This Poem

I wrote this as a response to Coleridge's "On Revisiting the Seashore," and thinking about Moses self-doubt when called by God. It might sound like I was terribly depressed, but that's not actually the case. Of course, there are things that any of us can dwell on and become depressed, but that's not my wheelhouse. I try to stay positive. But I did hit on those things in this poem that do bring me self-doubt. I chose to be struck by lightning on a mountain top because that's my experience more so than a seashore like Coleridge. The photo is from a climb this past summer on Grandmother Mountain in Benewah County, Idaho.