Final Battle: Color

In the final battle,
art’s soldiers take
to the streets,
to the viaducts,
to the overpasses and
underpasses,
the crumbling brick
of crumbling buildings;
employing armies
of aerosol, of design,
of form, of style,
of skill, of talent;
painting a future
with weapons of hope.

This poem is submitted for One Shoot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems based on the prompt “Graffiti,” please visit the site.

The totems rise skyward

From the formless waters
the totems rise skyward,
Babels and Babbitts of
commerce and
government and
academy, creating
personal and collective
suns of destiny,
deliverance and
salvation, galaxies
of monuments to
the insignificant and
it is beautiful,
for a time, until
the sunrise and sunset
are confused,
undifferentiated.

Dedicated to Darlene*

This poem is submitted to One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems submitted and an interview with photographer Scott Wyden, please visit the site.

This poem is dedicated to Darlene at Simply Darlene. If you make a donation to The High Calling during the month of May, I’ve committed to dedicate a poem to you, Just let me know via the comment box or an email that you’ve made a donation (not the amount).

Photograph by Scott Wyden. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Expectancy of Hesitation

You asked me to pose so I did,
but I thought what am I doing
I don’t have time for this
whose idea was
the green flower anyway
somehow you caught
the hesitation
it was more than that
the camera pulled my eyes
into oceans, my lifeboat
adrift but longing, desiring,
expecting something
how did you see I loved you

This poem is submitted for the Sunday Poetry Challenge hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems prompted by the photo, please visit the site.

Photograph: Heather Nelson by India Hobson. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

The Trail of Crystallized Tears

We wash across the land,
driven by a wind of greed
and fear, herded
from the land to a land,
learning how many ways,
how many times,
a man, a woman, a child
can die: murder
can be accomplished
by more than gun and knife.

We stream in suffering,
torn from the lands
of our ancestors,
a journey begun within
a shame sufficient
in its own death, flowing
a thousand crystallized miles,
the trail of crystallized tears,
to be cast upon, gasping,
a beach of crystallized sands.


This poem is submitted for One Shoot Sunday sponsored by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems based on the photo prompt, please visit the site.

This photo took me in a direction I did not expect to go, a direction not suggested by the photograph or the photographer. I started with a meditation, and ended with the Trail of Tears. You can learn more about the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail at Wikipedia.

Photograph by Roger Allen Baut for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.