Abram's ears

It is the smell of goats
and sheep that fills
my days, my dreams;
my house is strong cloth,
and poles. What is
my father’s inheritance
is mine.

Yet the voice says I am
to leave, abandon
what I know for a promise
of what I do not.
I go, less for the promise,
more for the voice.
My wife laughs.

This poem is dedicated to Leslie Moon and Pete Marshall, two of the founders of One Stop Poetry.

This poem is submitted to the final One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Shot Poetry. To see other poems submitted, please visit One Stop Poetry. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Leslie will be keeping the site online – a kind of digital memorial to slightly more than a year of a publication that encouraged poets, taught us about form, recognized our work, introduced us to each other, explored great photography, and created lasting friendships. They did well, and they served us well.

Illustration: The Call of Abraham, ceramic relief by Richard McBee (1980).

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.

Umbrella conversation

Our conversation floats
under a yellow umbrella,
words rising in a mild wind.
July hot, and light warm sweat
traces our backs, chests, temples.
Your hand moves away.
We talk in slight murmurs,
soft tones; I watch droplets
slide down our glasses
in iced condensation.
You look away and ask,
when will it turn cool.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Straw Umbrella on Beach by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. 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.

Physical Therapy

Shift your weight,
she says, to the left,
breathe deeply
to lift the right;
my brain laughs
at the novelty
until I laugh back.
Focus. Left. Focus.
Re-teach the brain.
Re-learn, brain,
counterintuitive
as it is. Lean into
the pain, she says,
place the weight
on the pain. Don’t
fight it; move into it.
Surprised, the pain
complies.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit One Stop Poetry. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

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.

Cultivating Autobiography

This Missouri clay:
it stains my fingers
when it rains;
zero organic matter
requires topsoil,
compost, fertilizer if
anything is to grow:
some of that New Orleans
gumbo mulch cooked
by river floods, swamp-basted;
baked Texas sand;
red cotton dirt from Tara;
crushed Mississippi magnolias;
stomped Languedoc grapes (dry);
spilled Alsatian blood;
Irish emeralds; dirt from under
the fingernails of English tradesmen,
barely emerged yeoman;
Swedish ice; and for the future,
ash from Mt. Fuji.
I plant the seed
someone else bought.

This poem is submitted for the Books & Culture poetry prompt, Writing Poems in Your Own Backyard.

It is also submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit One Stop Poetry, which just happens to be celebrating it's first anniversary. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Indiana Farm by David Wagner 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.

Forest Cathedral

I walk in the whisper
of the wind, splashes
of sunlight dappling
the arched nave,
shadows playing
in flickering green.
A prism’s refraction,
slight peels of light
color my way
toward the shrouded,
trunked apse. Saints
on their wooden perches
watch, approving.

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

Photograph: Tow Path by Peter Griffin via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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.

No one remembers your name

Sidewalks are wet,
the smells of rain mixed
with carbon belched
in exhaustion, you pass
blank faces hastening
to blank destinations.
The church door is locked;
no one remembers your name.

This poem is submitted to One Stop Poetry for its Saturday Celebration of The Doors and singer/poet Jim Morrison. The poetry prompt is to write a poem based on a line from the song, “People are Strange.” To see other submitted poems, please visit the site.

Firebird Suite

The shadows of blades
for feathers, a bird
swoops with blue thunder,
borne on a wind of violence;
accelerates,
surrounds,
captures,
fills,
transforms;
born into a fire of violence,
then separates
into burning tongues;
speaks.


This poem is submitted to One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more submitted poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Fire by Jaroslav Pavlov via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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.

Sweet Olive

The sweet olive emits its fragrance,
mild if slightly enticing, stopping just
short of cloying or sentimental,
and I am running up steps, Prescott Hall,
late and short of time as usual, so much
to do and experience and live, dashing
into this boothed laboratory, signaling
the lesson to the bored attendant as he
plays the assignment tape and then
inhaling, exhaling, thinking, dreaming
those throaty guttural consonants
Ich wurde genre ein Kalbsschnitzel
and superior capitalized nouns
Guten Morgen, Herr Doktor
earphones in place and spitting
words through teeth like a camel
dreaming of that sweet olive.

This poem is submitted to One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. To see more poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Illustration: Sweet Olive, Napoleon House (New Orleans) by William Hemmerling.

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.

I'm not good with words

I’m not good with words.
One time we saw all those
newspapers piled up,
rubber-banded, so we
thought we’d help dad and
stacked them in the red wagon
and delivered every one, mostly
to the wrong houses.

I’m not good with words.
One day we were cold so
we said let’s build a campfire
like the pioneers did and
we piled up sticks and paper
and some books and lit it,
our bedroom suffering
only minor damage.

I’m not good with words.
He got sick, you know. That’s
not supposed to happen
when you’re young enough
to live forever but it did,
and he kept laughing as he
faded, laughing harder
until he faded, then gone.

I never was good with words.

This poem is submitted for One Shot Wednesday hosted by One Stop Poetry. Too see more submitted poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph: Grief at Cemetery by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. 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.

He becomes a road

He becomes a road,
not only to Damascus
or Jerusalem or one
less traveled in snowy woods
or even open and
going west, young man;

A road filled with light,
even, straight, obvious,
a road logical
marked by a multitude
of signs and directions, paved
true under cloudless skies;

A road darkened, crooked
and curved and snaked,
disappearing into forest, night,
with asphalt crumbing, potholed,
stones missing, a road ending
at rivers, gorges, swamps;

A road forked, straight,
mapped, hidden,
a road to a destination,
a road to sudden, unknown exile,
a road from and to and neither,
a road.

*Dedicated to Duane Scott

This poem is submitted to the One Word Blog Carnival on “road” hosted by Peter Pollock. To see more posts prompted by the word “road,” please visit the site. The links will be live at 10 p.m. Central time tonight.

This poem is also submitted to One Shot Wednesday, hosted by One Shot Poetry. To see other poems submitted, please visit the site. The links will be live at 4 p.m. Central time Tuesday.

*This poem is dedicated to Duane Scott. 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: Country road by Teodoro S. Gruhl via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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.