After the fire

The fireball smashed
through the ceiling
we call sky, creating
a hole large enough
to watch cumulus clouds
pour in, a conflagration
of humidity and vapor,
a confluence of fire and ice.
After the fire drowned
itself, I looked to see
if heaven had opened.
Outside, blinding light
overwhelmed the night.

This poem is dedicated to Adam Dustus and Chris Galford, who have spent an enormous amount of time and effort for many months in interviewing photographers and bring some of the most incredible photographs to One Stop Poetry. Thanks, guys; you gave a lot of yourselves to benefit the rest of us.

This poem is submitted for the final One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems submitted and an interview with photographer Rosie Grady, please visit One Stop Poetry.

Photograph by Rosie Hardy for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

A Dickens Duet

A Tale with a Twist

A movie set, perhaps,
of alleyways; the balconies
touch in close conversation.
Fagin is about, somewhere.
The lights are right,
the camera rolls
when the child appears
in all his green innocence.
His name might be Oliver.

Great Expectations

Pip peers silently
into the dining room
and of course the first thing
he sees is that moldy,
moldering wedding cake,
crumbling in abandonment,
accented with green mold
instead of leafed frosting
to accompany frosted roses.
Miss Havisham wanders
dressed in faded stains,
dreaming of empire.

Both poems are submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other submitted poems and an interview with photographer Neil Alexander, please visit the site.

Photographs by Neil Alexander. Used with permission or One Stop Poetry.

Freedom

Flags flown
barbeque pits fired up
fireworks exploded
parades watched
picnics planned
food consumed
work holidayed

because

a doctor left his patients
for certain inalienable rights

a farmer set aside his plow
to fight at Bunker Hill

a hale good fellow had
only one life to give

words spoken
words written
words believed

words more than words

and blood spilled

freedom’s not
just another word

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

This poem is also submitted for the Warrior Poet Circle, hosted by Jason Stasyszen. To see other poems submitted for the prompt of “freedom,” please visit Connecting to Impact. The links be live on Monday morning, July 4.

Photograph: American Flag by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Everything that rises

Thirst, actual need
requires a certain
structure to satisfy,
and so the frond is
designed fan-like,
a collection system
to channel droplets,
to siphon moisture
like so much knowledge
to the central
nervous system,
a convergence
of hydrogenated wisdom.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems based on the photograph and to read an interview with photographer Adam Romanowicz, please visit One Stop Poetry.

Photograph: Converging by Adam Romanowicz for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Adam’s blog is here. Adam’s website is here.

I wait for the call

I wait for the call
that never comes,
the expectation that
begins before
the rotary dial,
when you pick up
the phone and ask
the operator to make
the call, but you have
to chat or gossip first
that’s part of her salary
or perhaps cajole
the other parties off
the party line.
I still wait for the call
through the dial and
the slimline and the cell
and the BlackBerry and
the iPhone and who knows
what else is going to happen
but it still doesn’t come.
The dust layers thick as
I sit on the shelf,
waiting.

This poem is submitted to One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poem submitted and the conclusion of the interview with photographer Rob Hanson, please visit the site.

Photograph: They Never Call by Rob Hanson. Used with permission for One Stop poetry.

The Machinist

Eyes focused,
intense, intent,
he works, his coordination
of eye, mind and hand
a delicate thing,
a learned thing,
a known without knowing
thing, a rhythm of the job,
of the work, the task.
He is content, he is satisfied,
even if he knows his name
will be printed
in the newspaper
only once.


This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To read an interview with photographer Rob Hanson and to see other poems submitted, please visit the site.

Photograph: Machinist by Rob Hanson for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Pyrrhic Victory

Believing victory
was done, he carried
the flag of red, blood
flowing into the wind,
flowing so fast
he missed
the wounded heel.
At the moment
of celebration,
his moment to make
himself a god,
he turned
ashen white, marbled.
No one was there
to cheer.

Dedicated to Anne Lang Bundy*

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

*This poem is dedicated to Anne Lang Bundy. 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 made a donation (not the amount).

Photograph: Statue by Walter Parada. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

They might be poppies

I thought at first they were poppies,
flashes of blood red smudged
against the sky of the dying day,
natural tombstones anchored
in fields of summer green.
I brought you one that day,
you remember. You touched
each petal lightly, tracing
your fingers along the edges.
He died at the Somme,
you said, a half-written letter
in his pocket. I wouldn’t read it,
you said, staring at orange
purple clouds of sunset,
but I have it still.

Dedicated to Charity Singleton*
This poem is submitted to One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems based on one of five photo prompts by photographer Fee Easton, please visit the site.

*This poem is dedicated to Charity Singleton. 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 made a donation (not the amount).

Photograph by Fee Easton. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Photo: Mother, 2 Sons

The photographer
arranged us just so,
seated on the coffee
table with a soft white
screen as backdrop.
We’re smiling, or course,
that’s what you do
in pictures, you smile.
And we each wear white.
You’re in the middle,
all of 34 years old
with the towhead son
on your right and the
redhead son on your left.
I look at the photo now
and think she’s beautiful,
with those cheekbones
and narrow face and
those smiling eyes still
full of dreams and life
and laughter. And now
when we talk a half
century later you
still end the conversation
every time with
I love you.

My mother still has this photo, placed in a big leather-bound family photo album, or else I’d include it here. Five years later, the third son came along.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. Instead of a photo prompt, this edition of One Shot Sunday has Mother’s Day as the prompt. To see more poems, please visit the site.

The Desert Teaches

The desert teaches
a man to consider
a question as if
Socrates asked,
a request as if
a penitent submitted,
a plea as if
a drowning man begged.
I speak no word,
I make no motion,
I offer no riddle.
Find what you seek
by reading my lips.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems and read the interview with photographer Rosa Frei, please visit the site.

Photograph by Rosa Frei for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Golden Years

There is very little that’s
golden about the golden
years, let me tell you and
I’m old enough to tell you
straight out what I think,
only the young have time
for circumspection and
I’m not young any more.
Oh, there’s gold in prescriptions
and doctors and hospitals
to be sure, but it’s the gold
to pay for them and don’t even
get me started on all the
patronizing because you think
old means stupid; old means
hard of hearing but old doesn’t
mean stupid. Now, where
did you say I could find
Mama’s room?

This poem is submitted to One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems based on the prompt, please visit the site.

Photograph by Greg Laychak for One Stop Poetry, Used with permission. You can find Greg Laychak’s web site here and you can follow him on Twitter.

Hope/Darkness

It can’t be helped.
I see verdant life,
light slipping
between the bars
of my window

forcing a way
into my darkness
like a seed
in a stone wall,
glowing with promise

shining with possibility
overwhelming with potential
hope forcing a way
into my darkness.
I reach but the bars

block my way
see don’t touch
see can’t touch,
my darkness forcing
a way into the light.

To see more poems prompted by the picture and several others, please visit One Shot Sunday at One Stop Poetry.

Photograph by James Rainford for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Dorothy's Lament

You’ve had the power all along
she said but
you had to learn how to use it
she said so
I clicked my ruby slippers together
three times
there’s no place like home
there’s no place like home
there’s no place like home
but I forgot I was holding that
stupid green balloon
and it kept me stuck
in Oz.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday at One Stop Poetry. To see other poems submitted and an interview with photographer Lauren Randolph, please visit the site.

Photograph by Lauren Randolph for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

The Light Beneath the Wings

It was never my intention
to have so powerful an effect
upon the church as I did, but that’s
how it turned out, I suppose.
I spoke and wrote and argued
reason and tolerance and tradition;
I thought that Catholics
could be saved, oh, the outrage
that created but why not?
Some would call it humanism;
I considered it theology.
My Puritan in-laws used
a voice of disdain later turned
Cromwellian;
my Anglican colleagues used
a voice of disdain later turned
cavalier.
I walked with my Queen
in the Temple garden
as she fretted the Armada;
not a good time
to be nice to Catholics
so I remained diplomatically
silent and kept my head.

It gives me more
than a little pleasure to know
that my small scribblings
would help light the wings
beneath the church;
even the birds think so.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday, hosted by One Stop Poetry. To read other poems based on the photo prompt and an interview with the photographer, James Rainford, please visit One Stop Poetry. To see more photos by Rainford, please visit his site at Fluidr.

Photograph of the statue of Anglican theologian Richard Hooker at Exeter Cathedral by James Rainford for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Performance Art

I know what you think it is
but it’s not so take
your patronizing condescension
masking disapproving condescension
elsewhere, if you please and
even if you don’t please for
I don’t work the streets
I live the streets and
the streets live me
they are my canvas and
I am the paint or sometimes
the watercolors to wash
away the rain
so if I stick three cigarettes
in my mouth it’s art;
I’m dying.

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

Photograph by Fee Easton. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Broadway Revival of an Old Favorite

Scripting had been simple:
total improv, each night
a different story, whatever
inspired the sole cast member:
a voice blaring on a loudspeaker.

The director’s job was easy:
put your name on the program
and coach the voice to speak,
preferably loudly; no music,
no choreography, no budget.

The hard work belonged
to the set designer, who later
said in a celebrated interview
that it took more than work,
more than sweat; blood.

Like the voice on the loudspeaker
the audience changed each night
but generally had the same
predictable reaction: great
expectations, disappointed.

Democracy in America: A Contemporary Reprise
Based on a work by Alexis deToqueville

This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday, sponsored by One Stop Poetry. To see other poems prompted by the photograph and an interview with the photographer, Jacob F. Lucas, please visit the site.

Photograph: The Show Must Go On by Jacob F. Lucas. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

A True Royal Story

I walk into this second-hand store,
second-hand when they actually
mean one slight cut above junk,
and just past the chairs
with ripped and ruined upholstery
is this dust-covered relic of youth.

I taught myself to type when I was 18,
it was June, because I had to know how
for journalism classes in the fall so I bought
an electric typewriter and
“Teach Yourself How to Type,”
an early birthday present.

I was a lousy teacher but I dutifully
sat for hours trying not to look
at the keys but I gave up, you know,
and turned hunt and peck
into a speed race for fingers
and I cheated and looked at all the keys.

I walk into Journalism 51; am overwhelmed
by a sea of manual typewriters, all
proudly bearing the name of Royal,
reigning in spite of the growing electric rebellion
of IBM Selectrics, Remingtons, Olivers,
Olivettis, Underwoods, and Smith-Coronas.

Insert yellow copy paper, learn
how to operate the carriage return
and teach your fingers how
to pound on keys like it was
some stress contest and it was stress,
no question about that.

Style error: automatic F;
spelling error: automatic F;
grammar error: automatic F;
punctuation error: automatic F;
all the while beating and slamming
the keys, Royal in their stubbornness.

And then this idiot of a teacher gives
a deadline assignment and starts
singing opera and performing
jumping jacks and using his desk
like a set of drums and how to work
with all this deliberate, focused insanity?

I look at this dust-covered Royal relic and
I don’t feel a tender fondness, exactly, but
more like profound thankfulness
for correctible spools of paper white-out
and the electricity that removed the pounding
from my fingers, still aching. I don't buy it.

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

Photograph by JackAZ Photography. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Hard Times for the Empire

No more starships,
no more death stars,
the emperor dances his last waltz
waiting in the bread line.
I hocked my light saber long ago;
all that’s left
is this unemployed fiddle.
But, oh, can I play,
I can make you dance,
I can make you sing
a Skywalker Serenade,
a Princess Leia torch song,
an R2D2 squeaky pantomime.
Chewbacca croons wookie tunes;
Stormtroopers will work for food.
Shall I play for you my favorite,
Han Solo, can you spare a dime?
Times are hard when all that’s left is to play a song in the rain.

This poem is submitted for the One Shot Sunday photo prompt at One Stop Poetry. To see more poems, please visit the site. And may the force be with you.

Photograph: Darth Vader by JackAZ Photography. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.

Portal of Rock and Stone

Looking out:
Stares through to beyond
field, hill, history
of possibility, hope
boundless
breaking past the confines
of a life, of lives.

Looking in:
Peers through sunlight into
mind, heart soul
through ruined lens
of wood and rock
to interior rooms,
now grass-carpeted.

Looking at:
Observes the painting
displayed on a wall of light
designed, imagined
as future, as past
the eye’s landscape
beckoning, retreating.


This poem is submitted for One Shot Sunday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see additional poems (and some spectacular photographs), please visit the site.

Photograph by Sean McCormick for One Stop Poetry. Used with permission.

Temporary Shelter

A circular rain swirls
the prairie, igniting
the grasses, warming
long-abandoned
houses, siloes, barns,
sheds, graineries
into internal renewal.
We dance
as long as the night lasts,
as long as the rain rotates,
preferably clockwise,
until the sun rises,
flattening the storm.

This poem is submitted to the One Shot Sunday poetry challenge sponsored by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems, please visit the site.

Photograph: Haunted Grainery by Sean McCormick. Used with permission for One Stop Poetry.