Allpoetry, Home of Poets

A crowd with pinhole boxes held to view
the sun's eclipse. The naked eye in dread
refrained a direct glance or rare preview
(with ultraviolet blinded, our vision sped)

The families in picnic mode on dunes
with children playing, sing a nursery rhyme.
A hum of summer chatterings in tunes
of early evenings spent as watches chime.

The dial's finger point, foreshadowing night
predicts a sudden darkness overhead.
A lemon smile across the sun's curved light
expresses wonder from a gilded thread

Medusa tempts all viewers gathered here
when writhing smiles and snaking hair appear

With two white roses on her breasts,
White candles at head and feet,
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;
Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white;
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
to see herself tonight.

As the "sun lazes on the horizon lending its
lethargy to the advance of twilight" we sat
chatting as the sun colored the
sky then it set, and as the sky filled with
glittering neon starlight we read a poem that
contained the line "eddies catch diamond
facades midst the pastel clouds
painted in twilight’s parade"
with me sipping coffee (cream and sugar)
_and him drinking black tea (no milk)

he share sobering news with me then
read the stanza, "my watch tower observes the
many moods of sky
sometimes clad in tangerine negligees,
and sometimes wearing grey mantillas of cloud
as I hold vigil with the changing phases of the
moon wearing a coronet of falling stars"

now my eyes seek the falling stars and he
grins as my eyelids squeeze
whispering on all the stars that fall.

"He sat watching shadows of the
outside world"  and just
to see them dance over the view, my
eyes followed the shadowed trails too

in his soft toned voice he told me that
"footprints follow a one-way alley
trading places with the steel
shadows of yesteryears and
hand-me-down cobblestones"

…and in this world
filled with replicable things those
'hand-me-down cobblestones'
grew irreplicable and new to the
paved streets they now line.

Off to the side we see the beach
with salted waves wiping the sand
cleaning traces from the day and he sighed,
turned to me and said, "when I look back my
footprints are erased from midnight’s scene,
and with them gone, it’s just as if
this stroll has never been"

but I whispered to him that the sea
cannot wash away him or his poetry and that
people see him in the lines that he writes.

Winds whistle blending with the
splashed crashes from the frothy tide,
speaking again, he says "I walked in a vacuum of
silence not knowing where I was in a familiar place"
shaking his bowed head

ache is louder than his voice mouthing
"frostbitten words hang in tempered
icicles of regret" then on that porch as our
eyes stared, a masked owl hooted from the
eucalyptus tree branch and I whispered that
apologies can thaw those frostbitten words.

Thumbing through the pages of his
journal, he grabs his pen and then
reads out loud reciting
the line he jots down
      "we used tinted thoughts to paint
      a montage of mementos…"

the night ends with me commenting
on the power in the lines and a hug
spawning his smile then I head home as the
"cashmere clouds drift closing the curtains on
night misted mountains" and blackbirds chaperone
me under that sky, as I pray to
chat again tomorrow then
      "echoes of my footsteps
                  play solitaire on the sigh of a breeze".

sunstrokes on mellow spring
begin to fade

wreaths of a season sit
yonder in a sunset valley
the landscape of a maze
hiding behind your eyelids

I absentmindedly write
'to blue or not to blue'
against soft lips and
chocolate freckles as
tallow candlesticks melt on
piles of pebbles scattered
all over a showy meadow of
elderflowers and forget-me-nots
more you than me
more you than anyone

you tell me it's the way
of lotus seeds to ignite
their parade before
they drift across the river
to another shore
where they are unknown

like I know a thing about
drifting away from home

days shorten
simmering under curtains
pulled over the moon

kerosene lanterns come out too early
glowing upon a face
hanging on the garden wall
this puzzle in brushstrokes and ink

but what do I know about
oil paintings or snuffed shadows
or about longing
  for that matter...

His soaked leather boots,
    sloshing as he walks along the creek.
Ahead, a tall boulder of limestone,
    he scans the creek bed while sitting on the boulder.

His gaze pauses at three different stones.
  Siltstone,
      Slate,
        Quartzite.

As he stands his gaze guides him,
    his boots splash with every step.
His hands reach into the water,
      he picks up the three stones.

Running his fingers along the stones, he notes the surfaces.
      Siltstone with a coarse and bumpy quality,
          Slate with a rough and pitted surface,
                Quartzite feeling smooth and angular.

While he dips every stone into the creek water,
    his hands begin to grind the stones together.
The grinding finding its rhythm,
    Silt against Slate,
      Silt against Quartzite,
          Slate against Quartzite.

As the repeating rhythm continues, the stones change.
  Silt now honed and flat,
      Slate ground until fine and even,
            Quartzite smoothed, shiny and flush.

After using the individual stones to shape one another,
  he pulls out a knife.
Once rough and unpolished,
  now flattened and polished.

Once useless stones in a creek,
  with no purpose.
Now able to sharpen any tool,
  Keeping each other flat

The kettle clicks off
but the water keeps its small violence,
shaking against the glass.
Outside, the last light
leans against the fence
like someone who has already decided
to leave.
I rinse the mug
and leave the steam
to thin itself into the room.
Somewhere a clock
is still counting
what we no longer measure.

The dog's mouth is foaming and he barks at his bath.
I learned how to fix him at school,
how to stop his illness.
Just prevent the virus of a living host.
So as my ears ring, Father walks in with the dog's medicine.