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.