A Winter of Endurance

There’s an orb in the sky that I scarce can remember
That I haven’t seen since way last November.
‘Tis for me the last icon of the Fall season norm,
Before we were hit by the imperfect storm.
And, from that moment on, in that season of change,
Nothing would ever, be ever, the same.

Here came a winter with snow augmentation,
Antagonized daily by more trepidation.
A winter so fearless, too long, and so cheerless;
A winter of twice, and thrice, and suffice
Of snow and blow, and cold-moulding ice.

A winter of sadness and intimidation,
A winter of shuddering and chilled palpitation,
That held tightly captive the Canadian Nation
Buried helplessly deep in a reversed excavation.
With so many ice crystals whirling and twirling –
That one had to cancel both hockey and curling.

A state of alarm. And a state of much dread.
Stuffed up our noses, stuffed up our heads.
And to deal with our suffering with no buffering stop
We reached for the ‘Vicks’ for that chuffed-up nose-block.

Still all we could do was to fret and to fume,
When the fog of the darkness continued through noon.
We were trembling and quaking, quivering and stuttering
Still clouds overhead and more snowflakes a-fluttering.
All heightened and raised up to such an excess
Surpassing all history – the shock and distress —
Intensification up and at nightfall spurred on,
Till all thought of red roses and summer was gone.
Still winter lingers. It stays. It remains.
Hopelessness is all; we can’t stand the strain
Of a Season we wear, we share, and compare,
In Sub-Arctic temps that thicken the air.

What I tell you now, and I tell you quite true
I have ne’er been so sad, and ne’er been so blue.
And I’ve ne’er seen before such a seasonal storm
With hell frozen over and we thought it the norm.
And what I say now is with sturdy assurance
‘This winter was simply a Test of Endurance!’

But oh, sing with glad tidings of joy and of mirth
We have sunshine enough to warm up the earth.
‘Tis time, oh ‘tis time for a bewildered dance ‘round,
A BIG FAT WARM SUN is in the sky…
Shining down.

P.S. If the picture has you puzzled, this is the uncanny art that I found on the window in the back bedroom. This is an old house with old windows. Storm windows have to be manually put up each winter and screens removed. I never did put the storm up on this window. I'm rather glad I didn't cause isn't this picture truly lovely? And the tops of the ferns reflected upside down in the mirror pond, is that not totally awesome?

The Fight for Light and Night

Cirrus cloisters, stratus strips,
Fomenting fogs with blacking kits.
Scowling shadows, hoary hinges,
Like savages on drunken binges.
Barb’rous troops, annihilating;
Ghoulish gargoyles, regurgitating.

Puffed up paunches of nimbus naughties,
Wasted wantons, woolpack haughties,
Nebulous nymphs, cumulus hustlers —
Seek revenge and flex their muscles.

Spirited scuds of nautical speed
Shoving and pushing. Nasty indeed.
And the twisting pursuit of a funnel turbine
Wraps all unapparent that won’t fit in this rhyme.

Oh, ‘tis a sturdy force discharging the night,
Against the campaign of that last arc of light.
Victory, too soon, comes to the stronger—
‘Twould be a grand thing if the fight could last longer.

But, ‘No! — all too soon — the death of the day
A brutal fight? — Yes.
But one lovely fray!’

NOTE: Admittedly this poem is a bit rough in spots, but come-on-now, I was writing it in the midst of a battle. All that aside any editing suggestions to smooth the rough spots would be most welcome.

Winter Garden

Winter gardens...what a sight!
Respectful, subservient,
Humble, contrite.
With textures softened and
Colors subdued
An invitation to
Coffee-tea-hues –
That’s how we like it –
Gently steeped and infused
And delicately splashed
With pastel winter blues.

Sky Ways 2.

THEOLOGY OF LOVE AND LIGHT

Trespass again; disguise of night
Lift your shadows to hide the light
Night after day, ‘tis totally trite
Yet, I can’t look away.

Seems that other regions pass
Day is shattered like shivered glass
Monsters appear from a dark crevasse
Yet, I can’t look away.

Purgatory –– there’s its bluff
Paradise — in golden rough
Sacred hills — newly stuffed
I can’t look away.

Woolly fold and sculptured frieze
With honeyed middle interleaved
Replete with soul-thought in the weave
I can’t look away.

On hallowed hillock; a golden pillow
And near-to-by –– a burning willow
Waves of glory, seas that billow
I can’t look away.

Now the night is in full bloom
Hung up high –– a silvery moon
Heart-swell for loves who want to
spoon
–– I look away.


NOTE: What can I say about this poem except when Pauline told me my inspiration to write sky poems was a “brave” endeavor, I broadly interpreted that as a challenge and immediately snapped another sky photo and grabbed my poetry stylus.

Sky Ways 1.

Pastel origami
Inter-folds of
Luminosity
Withered and prostrated.

Breathless tide
In a river lock
Without perfume of
Tangle, or wrack

Fermented rills of foam
Agitate the borders of
A sandwiched abstraction.

Painted in frolic
By a terrestrial artist—
With medium of
Atmospheric suspension,
And a soft brush of light.

NOTE: This poem (and my previous post), gave me an inspiration to try to write a Sky Poem once a week inspired by some changing cloud formation. But to be totally honest, my inspirations, though passionate initially, are usually short-lived (and I no longer do commitments). Still…who knows?

Want to join me?

The Pewter Pitcher

THE PEWTER PITCHER

Pauline passed the word to me from here, and so with little else to inspire me I decided to write a poem about a pewter pitcher.

But I should tell you that right now I am creating a nursery rhyme book for my 2-year old grandson and so with my mind entrenched in that arena, my poem may sound a little bit silly and a big bit juvenile.

THE OLD PEWTER PITCHER

That old gray pewter pitcher
Is what we use at tea.
But Grandma’s pewter pitcher
Is more than what you see.

The handle curves like her gentle hand
With soft and grazing touch
And overall, sweet simplicity,
Like that dear one, loved so much

And in the delicate laurel wreath
The circle of love we sustain
And in the pursed pout of the lip
Want of kisses seems so plain

And in the gloss of this holy grail
There is a fogged reflection
Fossilized blurs of yesteryear
Curves of the same connection.

(She takes it from the wooden shelf
Sets it on a cloth of lace
Then with a rough, and work-worn hand,
She waves me to my place)

Yes, there are pipkins on the shelf
More polished and more sleek
But only the pewter pitcher
Speaks a language so unique.

‘Cause Grandma’s pewter pitcher
Is more than what you see
That beautiful grey chalice,
Brings crème fraiche and love to me.

Winter Solstice Seduction

Winter comes in his cunning way
With a gentle tread of
Consummating silence.

I dress for his arrival
Woolly vest, warm toque,
Layered chastity jeans.

I say, “No, No, No,!”—
but he will not listen

He wraps himself around me
Exhales his chilly breath,
Kisses me with icy tenderness,
Nuzzles me with frosted brow—
And it is too lovely.

“Oh solstice of Christmas Joy!
Come —
Entangle me in sweet coolness
And kiss me again.”

When the Exodus?

When will the Exodus begin?
When will manna rain from the heavens?
When will the interchange of Winter and Spring
Bring nimble representation of the switch?
When the soft warm kisses of Spring?

How much longer will curtains of gloom
Shadow Sundays and Mondays and daytime?
How much longer will arctic landscapes
Fall from the sky and plummet ground-ward?

How can Nature’s metabolism remain so anorexic?
Deficient of organic splash and temperatures
Needed for copulation of sprang grass
And tuned bird song?

Why is Spring not yet inseminated?
Why does Winter, though impotent,
Hang on to a foolish Viagarian belief
That it can seduce yet again with frosty charms?

It’s too much. This lustful beastly Winter relationship
That duplicates the unrighteous wickedness of Babylon.
And strikes those who look back into
salt-white
salt-like
pillars of ice.

Bake and Plate 2008

The cooks are baking resolutions
That taste like nasty convolutions
So long delayed the restitutions
So why not work with substitutions?

The chastening powder of firm resolve
Is granular—it won’t dissolve,
But I’m not lost in futile time
I’m busy, busy, mixing rhyme.

I’ll cook ’08 with slack protraction
And a gentle fold of interaction
I’ll blend and whip into distraction
A sweeter batter of abstraction.

And this is how the mix is done —
With tone of nature, blaze of sun,
With reflux of nostalgic lime,
A bit of sage, a dash of thyme.

That is how you bake ’08
And then you serve it on a plate!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

What Promises Are

You will find in a promise, if you pull it apart
A dainty delectable that tastes a bit tart
An incalculable blend bent to disguise
With less thoughtful intent, than better-kept lies.

So I have more faith in mystical things
That approach in blue light or on sacred wings
Cause for many a promise is a weird kind of joke
Too easily uttered, too readily spoke.

Vows shouldn’t be like that, they should settle right in
Cause breaking a promise is the worst kind of sin.
They should telescope dreams and life-schemes ignite
But too often before I can turn out the light
I get a short message updating our truce...

“I can’t keep my promise, but I have an excuse!”

Moments in Time

Moments rushing, rushing, rushing,
Tumbling, trampling, pushing, crushing.
Impatiently moving; So anxious to go
As if scuttled by fear and murderous foe.

For a moment they’re here and then they are gone
Like a rippled reflection lost in a pond
Promptly transfigured to shadows of dust
Reality surrendered – polish to rust.
Such chaos and carnage, I can’t help but reckon
Would it hurt them to pause for one pithy second?

All that I want from my moment debris
Is one untarnished granule of antiquity
But yet when I manage one snip to extract
It slips from my grip
And goes racing back.

Written in response to the writer’s prompt “Moment” at Writer’s Island.


Lost on Writer’s Island

Directions, a compass. I have little concept of either. My internal compass has a weak magnetic pole and a delicate spinner. Like a bad cell-phone, the mechanism is intercepted and useless when walled in by steel, concrete, wood, shadow, or the absence of sunshine.

North, south, east, west. It’s all one and the same to me. Take me into a building with a two-cornered hallway and my compass goes kaput. And then I am lost – looking for Hub to take my hand and lead me out of there. He can follow his nose in the pitch-dark of night and still get where he is going.

Got lost the other day. Went down some non-distinctive hallway at Pauline’s Site and ended up marooned on ‘Writer’s Island’. An island foggy with sea salt and tide. Compass down and no traditional signage to lead me home. Just a roadside prompt that said, “Moments” and some oblique reference to poetry.

Desperate to escape, I spun my poem of “moments” and turned the corner to find I was back on a familiar corner and a familiar street. And that is how this poem came to be.

Warming Up To Poetry

[All those poetry anthologies that are so bloody depressing]

They slither through moss and dissect broken hearts
Reality and dreams in a death camp apart.
Judgments so somber in rhyme and in verse
Ethereal visions that make me feel worse.

Minstrels and lyrics, alone on the sweeps
Duplicity enough to make court jesters weep
Warnings that in life, nothing will keep
Except the cold bed of eternal sleep.

“Poets, Come stir me but don’t leave me cold
Or I’ll kindle a fire in me word-burning stove.”
I’ll toss in the poetry. I will be that bold.
I’m had quite enough of the ‘moss and the mold’.


And in the warmth of the fire, content and demure
Here will I find a most poetic allure
Oh yes, burning poems into something obscure
Is an exhilarating tonic of indulgence and cure.
I dance to the crackle, pop-flicking, and whrrrr…
Of blackened pentameter and dactylics that purr.

Woman

Woman is the everlasting encumbrance
Of time, a garden, and a coiled serpent.

Insatiable in her want of warm rocks
Long conversations while listening more
Of exuberance versus stillness of thought
And seemliness of the soul

But still within her longings
Linger memories of serpentine-thoughts
Manipulation of destiny
That link to a garden and a tree.

Fangs hidden by sensuous moist lips
Crush fresh fruits from the garden
And draw sweetness where they can
It is a needful thing
And only then is she sated.

And so,
With the setting of the sun…

Eve falls.

The Immortal Writ

When I have no inspiration
And I can find no calibration
For stylus, writ and imagination

Still I write.

This is, for me, a forced conscription
It’s who I am. It’s my conviction
So

Still I write


So still I write, I’m writing still
Though prose is sick; and poetry ill,
Wit is ailing, plot is failing
Yet

Still I write.


Perhaps I should lay down me pen
And never take it up again.
Roll it in a winding-sheet;
Prepare a spot in the mossy peat.

Then with dignity, I can mourn my loss
By a gargoyle-stone sarcophagus.

Nah…

Wipe your tears, unbend your knees
I only wrote this poem to tease.
And you should perhaps take extra measure
To wipe away that look of pleasure…
Cause,

Still I’ll write!

Derailment

Head bowed she moves slowly
Planting and shuffling each faltering step
While grasping with white-knuckles the precious cart
That came as a self-extricated gratuity.
Her other prize – a loaf of day-old bread
Bought with a coin left by a harried customer.
In the coin slot of the grocery cart,
tipped and carelessly derailed.

She bends over the cart in usual hunched form
Studying the filthy sidewalk through the wire grid.
All of it a blurred and rippled vision
With only the exceptional clarity of the
Bold lettering on one solitary bag in the cart.
While others in domestic comfort read cereal boxes,
She feels a happy completeness in the sustenance
Promised by these words - “Liberty Bread”.

She smiles and raises her Medusa-spiked hair,
Smooths with gnarled hands her dingy robe.
And unfolds a derelict body into a
spasm of honorable uprightness.

And then in that moment of poise, she cries
Like a trumpet blast to the bustling streets and busy throng…

1.“Keep, ancient lands your storied pomp…
Send …homeless, tempest-tossed, to me…”

She reattaches herself to the cart,
Folds again, and moves on

Laughing…while we weep.

1. Italicized text is from Emma Lazarus’, “The New Colossus”, written for inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

The Loon's Cry

In the forest, massive trees fall
In crashes of utter silence
While a warbling vibrato
Echoes across the lake.

Releasing rapid transitions
That demand all that is something,
And all that is nothing
To ken to the sound.

Forego auditory interpretation.
This resonance seeks
With greater intensity
Innermost faculties of the soul.

When there is nothing to hear it
That absence of life
That absence of being
Stops in its tracks.

Steeped in the magical impact of
Singular sounds kneaded together...

The jolly laughing
And the friendless sobbing
Of a loon.

________

A particular circumstance in my life inspired this poem. I will tell you about it in my next post.

Once Friend, Now Foe

I peek around the window casing. I must not let them see,
They will tuck their brilliant color when they see—it is me.
I still have tattered remnants locked in a childhood vault
Of a friendship that was broken, it was nobody’s fault.

But if I try to resurrect how it once was with us
I’m not sure if I should smile, or if I want to cuss.
When I glimpse their little faces and see them nod their heads.
Back come all the gentle thoughts combined with what I dread.
____

Thoughts of patient-plaited blossoms, I wear as a golden crown
And a feverishly-plucked bouquet, of soft and yellow down.

I remember all I longed to know as I lounged in a golden field,
Secrets only a dandelion knew and only a dandelion could reveal.

There were things told to me through spectral fluff
That I breathed upon with a gentle puff
Perilously one parachute clings to the vine.
Giving sacred promise – that he will be mine.
So loved by one, though no longer by three…
I’m not disappointed, if that’s how it must be.
___

Oh I know they’re so jolly in hot sunny weather,
And with all of the grand times we’ve had together
When did that fast bond get so twisted with pain?
To a malignant affinity of disgust and disdain?

I’ve never expressed it, but they certainly know
Cause they duck and fold wherever I go
They bend and cower and play hide-and-seek
And when they think I’m not looking…
They have a quick peek.

So unfold for children, when they come to play
But stay distant from me, it’s better that way
Though skittish you are and though you may hide
I know that you’re there and you’ll always abide!

A blessing in one form, a curse in another
Still a most precious gift from a child to her mother.

Spring's Brew House

Snow, sod-stained with coffee grounds
Sugar, cream, spilled all around
Dusky tea leaves on a sleepy shrub
And fresh hot java in my mug.

P.S. So who inspired this little thought?

Pauline, of course!

The Righteous Virgin

A needy soul, without notice, without prize
Without descendants or indiscretions
Gray temples, dim eyes, and wasted loins
The offset for honor that was hoarded
‘Til out-distanced by decline.

Night, repressed and unaccented
Daylight, a separate liberation
From urgency, but weighted
By attitudes external to her world
Of shallow indifference, even scorn
No applause for the spinster whose
Aching longing was purified
By a righteous fire lapping
At her withered loins

Senses thicken, memory fades
Dispassionate and hollow
Long ago, like a volcanic eruption
Passion heated, melted, and erupted
From the core of her being

It is nothing more than fiddling
In the transparency of day
The bleached desert a wasteland
Where she still battles with chaste intentions
Empty and alone she vaguely recalls
A battle neither lost nor won.
The long struggle and the ultimate
Exodus of the courage she
Needed to weakly surrender.

NOTES: I have a creative personality. So I sometimes have to square off with a kind of ‘weirdness’ that attaches itself to creativity that leaves me red faced and a bit squirm-ish. If you knew me personally, my real-life persona, you would find this work quite shocking, considering I’m stone sober, I only pop calcium pills, and I take life seriously. So I am a bit uncomfortable about this post and you might be too. But still, the question is, is this any different than painting nudes? I don’t know. Can this be called a creative work? Or is it just so much rubbish that reveals far too much of my foolish nature?

So do others write poetry like this? How would I know? I'm too straight-laced to read them.

Silent Rabble

The ice leaps, and the day
Withers to the lesser
The silence is formless,
Simplified, quietude. I long
For clamor and complexity
Tumult and loquacity,
For words and voices
To absorb me.

The ice compresses
Air, liquid, matter
Into unrelenting
Hoary auspices of the
Migration of glaciation
And perceived permanence
Of the polar ice,
The accordance
Of that significance
One and the same.

While the ice leaps, and the day
Withers to the lesser, the cold
Matrix of silence and ice
Bonds together
Without change but yet an opening
Drives me
To without myself
To where I stand apart
The only exchange
The silent rabble of the day
Withering to the lesser
And steaming breath.


NOTES: After Christmas, I drank the dregs of the leftover wine and let the silence, the ice, and my own aloneness overwhelm me.