I don’t feel blameless

I don’t feel blameless or innocent;

I grumble and dispute, so much dirt

on my glass that I should be called

Saul of Tarnish. Little light passes

through to penetrate or pierce;

I can’t see enough even to cry

tears, the gloom so thick that

I’m unable to cry at all. It

grasps with a strangling embrace;

grumble, grumble, toil

and trouble, I complain

while others crumble.

I hear a shout:

a kingdom for a nail,

a nail for a kingdom,

a nail, and my thumb is swollen,

a nail for theses on a door,

a nail, and a man died.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. To see more poems, please visitthe site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time.

Photograph by nuzrath nuzree via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

Glass, no stain

The window glass is not clear

but it is not colored, no stain

to reflect reds, yellows, blues.

The light filters through,

suffusing and bathing the interior

and this on a cloudy day.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, pleasevisit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today. 

The poem was inspired by my attending a Sunday service at Westminster Chapel, London.

Photograph via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Then and Now

Then:

She sits on the hood

of his car, a 1938 Packard

owned by his funeral parlor

father. Unsmiling, she looks

what people call saucy,

an attitude that promoted

her to hood ornament.

Now:

She stopped going

to class reunions when

numbers dwindled

to insufficient to make

a class reunion.

Fifty became forty

became twenty-seven

became sixteen became

eight became two,

the two who never

liked each other but

they’d mourn each other

anyway.

It’s Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems submitted, please visit thesite. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time. 

Remaking cowboys

Silver shiny metal

in black leather holsters

and thin strips of dotted paper

we called caps that promised

to explode if hit precisely right

We were the wild west

in fenced suburban yards

where it was safe

to be the wild west

Swing sets were our forts

or encircled wagon trains;

we practiced being shot

and falling over safely dead

until the family dog sniffed

our ears and moms called

dinnertime and served up the grub

We were Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey

and Ben Cartwright and the Rifleman

and Matt Dillon and Rawhide

and the masked man known only

as Kemosabe and the masked man

from Mexico dressed in black

and carving Z everywhere

We remade the small screen

remade the large screen

remade the Caitlins and the Bodmers

and the Remingtons and grainy photographs

and kept the myth alive, the dream alive,

until we matured and became

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

until we matured more and used

light sabers and had sidekicks

named Chewbacca

Over at dVerse Poets today, the poetry prompt is cowboy poetry, which the above poem isn’t, exactly. But the spirit of it is close enough. To see other poems written from the prompt, please visit dVerse Poets.

Painting: A Dash for the Timber (1889) by Frederic Remington.

I opened a book

I opened a book, selecting

a place at random, and began

to read from mid-sentence,

to see that it is only a fragment

of time, text without context.

I look to the sky.

I look to the sky to explain

but it remains a bright blue,

silent except for a few clouds.

Even the wind has stopped,

hiding in the mountains,

hovering above the sea.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVersePoets. To see other poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central today.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

It is not a season

It is not a season but a memory,

or nest of memories, of day camp

and Bible school, hot sand on hot beaches,

sunburns, snowball stands, and sloshing

hot coffee or cold milk with hot doughnuts

and listening to jazz, always there

especially when no one was playing,

even too young to know it was jazz.

It is not a season but Saturday matinees,

sitting in the dark cool and watching

badly acted Italian movies with English subtitles,

or taking the bus into town with mother

for shopping and a movie and (if I was lucky)

a ride on the streetcar.

It is not a season but falling asleep

to the sound of the attic fan, upper lip

washed lightly in sweat, or a week

at grandmother’s house and tooling

around in a slightly newer than Model T Ford,

or with the aunt in the Ninth Ward

with a front yard called the levee

of the Industrial Canal.

It is not a season but candy

at small grocery stores and R.C. Colas

with peanuts in the bottom and Moon Pies

whose chocolate melted on your fingers

and homemade ice cream at church socials.

It is not a season but it was all real,

helping construct a child and a childhood,

and now it resides, quietly,

in the mirage of memory.

Over at dVerse Poets, today, the prompt is about summer and heat and mirages. To see what others have done, please visit dVerse Poets.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

View from the train

A child, face pressed, watches

blurs of greens and white and blue

flow in uncoordinated motion,

sees them for an instant and then

watches them disappear into vapors

left behind by the train, Small towns

rush by, only recognizable

by an individual sameness,

the hardware and feed store facing

the track, defiantly, but quickly

left behind. We hurtle along

steel lines to a destination growing

less clear and more realized.

The child laughs.

This poem is submitted to dVerse Poets for Open Link Night. To see other poems, please visit dVerse Poets.

Photograph taken on the Amtrak train from Kirkwood, Mo., to Hermann, Mo., June 15, 2013.

All on the same page

Singly and together we crowd

into the designated space, careful

to avoid the edges and the inevitable

cuts, but we are so many and the space

so small we soon find ourselves

crowding and elbowing each other,

finding breathing increasingly difficult

as more and more of us push inside,

until some of us are hanging

by the edges, irrespective of the inevitable

blood staining the white, and the words

upon the white, until the space itself

begins to shudder and buckle causing

the wisest among us to leap for safety.

Over at dVerse Poets today, the prompt is idioms, and I can think of no idiom I’m least fond of than this one. To see more poems, please visit dVerse Poets.

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

The Theology of Puddles

It’s just a patch of dirty water,

nondescript, huddled by the curb,

silently waiting for evaporation

as it reflects upon its short life,

when it is suddenly catapulted

into eternity by the sandaled feet

of a three-year-old boy.

Over at dVerse Poets, the poetry prompt is the beauty of everyday things. I don’t think I could find something more prosaic than a mud puddle. To see more poems responding to the prompt, please visit dVerse Poets.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Nautilus, broken

Partially embedded in the sand,

a nautilus, chambered, broken

perhaps by driftwood or a foot,

carelessly trod until the crunch

was heard. Pieces glisten

in their sheen; the sound of the sea

fractured yet still identifiable.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visit dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photography by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Reflection in polished glass

The child in the mirror spoke

back to me, responding

to a question I’d forgotten;

he didn’t remember the answer

to the question I’d forgotten

and so we stared into the mirror,

realizing each victory contains

the seeds of defeat, and each defeat

contains the seeds of hope.

I looked to the sun, risen,

and understand the contradiction.

Over at dVerse Poets, the Saturday poetry prompt is about twins, or doubles, or two of a kind. Take a look and see what others write.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

A pain that leads

It is a pain that leads,

leads to acceptance,

leads to resignation,

to exhaustion. It cannot

be soothed, not now,

perhaps forever. From

a moment of breath,

everything changes,

nothing endures, it is

all different, alien and

cold until we find

the source of light

again, until we touch

the source of light

again, until we become

light again.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

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

I Walk with William Wordsworth

I walk with William Wordsworth

as he walks his field, his field

of daffodils, a yellow sea

moving in the wind invisible.

I walk with William Wordsworth,

and I ask him who planted

this yellow sea waving

in the wind, these ten thousand

thrusting beauty upwards. He

didn’t speak, he answered

with a smile, his last.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more posts, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

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

He turns his face to the city

He turns his face to the city,

fusing its past and future

in one weeping moment,

an immediate joy,

an undeniable sadness.

He enters with acceptance,

not resignation or foreboding.

He walks the streets, canyons

of darkness and fear.

He walks the streets, forested

by voices  rising not in hope

but desire, seeking what

he will not offer, refusing what

he freely gives.

This poem is submitted to Open Mike Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

At three in the morning

It awakens him at three in the morning,

first with the flash of anxiety edged

with panic, then the dark, rainy gray

of resignation. He moves his hand,

touching the cold sheets next to him,

cold when he wants the warmth

of what he knew. The laughter

that was has fled, leaving a dismal

silence to create its own vacuum,

its own void of memory. He considers

the possibility that it is he who lies

buried in the white coffin.

This poem is submitted to the One Word Blog Carnival hosted by Peter Pollock, and the word today is grief.

It is also submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

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

The white stone

Walk on a rocky beach

seek a single stone

a white stone worn

smooth and buffed

by large hands using

the sea to sand and

grind, and shape and

contour, flatten.

The stone bears a name,

my name, the name

I do not know.

This poem is submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems submitted, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Sue Rawlings via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Hearing the voice ahead

Hearing the voice ahead,

we dance among the trees,

we dance among the trees,

moving forward, hearing

the voice ahead, dancing

on the leaves, touching

hands, hearing

the voice ahead,

always ahead, carried

on the wind, carrying

the wind, being

the wind.

This poem was composed in the Great Hall at Laity Lodge in the Hill Country of Texas, after hearing Marlon Hall speak. I was there for a Leadership Initiatives retreat hosted by the Foundations for Laity Renewal.

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVersePoets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph taken from the balcony of Laity Lodge, looking across the Frio River to the hill beyond. This is the view when you’re seated in the Great Hall for a worship service.

Once, only in summer

Once, only in summer:

they came, brown-bagged

from the A&P, opened

to reveal spheres

of black-red purple ripeness,

placed in a glass bowl

on the kitchen counter,

counterparts to spheres

of reddish-peach ripeness,

in unison, issuing the sirens’

call to the boy,

grabbing black-red purple

in one hand

and reddish-peach

in the other

and stealing to the backyard

to savor double sweetness.

This poem is a response to the “purple poetry” prompt issued by Seth Haines at Tweetspeak Poetry.

It’s also submitted to Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Photograph by Brunhilde Reinig via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Broken Hallelujahs

Shards of hallelujahs

litter the floor, shredded like

waste paper, forgotten, not made

I was here once before,

walking on broken hallelujahs,

the cuts leaving a blood path

Hymn-less, I sing a song

bordered in gray, etched

in black, pushing my words

into the chorus of night, hearing

the broken response, the fading

echo of broken hallelujahs

Over at dVerse Poets, the Poetics prompt today is all about Leonard Cohen. To see more poems submitted, please visit dVerse Poets.

Painting: December by Gerhard Richter (1990), St. Louis Art Museum.

Letting words take flight

He dreamed for years,

until the dream formed

words, and sentences formed

story, and story formed yet

another dream. The dream

became real, tearing the walls

of his mind, seeking escape

to become other dreams,

others’ dreams. He held it,

still, until it made

an unconditional demand.

He opened bloodied palms

and watched words take flight.

This poem is submitted to dVerse Poets, where the Poetics prompt today is “The Art of Letting Go.” To see more poems, please visit dVerse poets.

Photograph by Richard Spencer via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.