Bride

She comes all winter warmth

Swathed in clinging frost

And diaphanous gloom.

Her smile of frozen teeth

And her eyes of icy ponds

Send shivers through the room.

We think of death as skeletal,

Cowled with cloak of black

Hunched like some old farmer

Over his scythe and sack

To cut and carry us to our doom,

But no, death is not the groom.

Death comes dressed in marriage veil,

In a snow white bridal gown

With a long icicle train.

Our final vows are sealed by one

Who doesn’t steal, but stills our heart

With a lover’s kiss that ends all pain.

BRIDE the reorder reading by the author

It is suggested you scroll down and turn off my music before playing the video.

I am hoping this will work now on "Voices and Friends". Soundcloud burst and rained on my parade trying to use it for that purpose, even with Nancy trying to help me. So decided to go to the video route.

I am not sure why I picked this particular poem. Maybe because the poem was a troublemaker, too. One day I got this one line in my head and couldn't get rid of it: "She comes all winter warmth." I could seem to do anything with it either, except I kind of liked it. Finally, what we have here is what I came up with.

After chatting with nancy, I decided to record this in a graveyard and then realized I never saw any graveyards nearby. Where I grew up all the churches seemed to have a cemetery, but not so in my current neck of the woods. I finally located one and wandered back to these older stones. The folk in the house in the background were having a Labor day BBQ. It smelled good. I wonder what they thought of this strange guy kneeling behind a tombstone reading something? Probably thought I was praying.

Most Influential Failure in My Lifetime

Ode to Nick Drake 1948-1974

A breath

One leaf left

Short as a cigarette puff

Time has told me

Day is done

For the poor boy.

Drift away

Like a cloud across

Saturday’s sun.

Life was brief

For the man in a shed.

Parasite

His music is

Why did it play too late?

Struck

As if a chime

On a city clock.

Death

By depression

Is a terrible cure

For a troubled mind.

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Super Bowl

Wouldn’t it be great

If it were a game,

Just the game,

And not the name?

Forget the media hype

And just play the best,

Just the best.

Forget the rest.

I can do without The Who,

Or any celebrities

Celebrated decades ago

With no relevance to the sport.

Stop the presses, blackout the TV.

Hand us the ball.

Give us a field, a back lot, an alley,

Mud, rain, snow or dirt,

We’ll play a game

We won’t soon forget.

The game went till dark on a winter afternoon.

We came home with ripped and tattered clothes,

With bodies tired and souls alive

Exhilarated by the throbbing bruise

Or the stinging skinned knee.

There were no cheering crowds, no referees;

The only replays dreams within our heads.

The passes thrown, the tackles made,

The arguments ended in shrugs or laughs,

And tomorrow always another super bowl.

Wouldn’t it be great

If it were a game,

Just the game,

And not the name?

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Rain

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Sh-h-h-h!

Tune in to the din.

There is no shadow

In the dim of the rush

In the hush,

Of the rain.

This

Is the gloom of sin

In a cowl of cloud.

We wallow in the splash,

In the lash

Of the rain.

Drips of spirit had gurgled down some drain,

Or slid in slow droplets from the window

Of my eyes to puddle upon my hands,

Writhing together in an empty pain

Like the weeping limbs of some willow

Who in summer-flooded fields sways, but stands.

Within this twilight in the middle day

Of later life, I hear the patter and ping,

The roar and crash and splatter. I listen

To the rain in its musings and its fury,

To its whisper, its shout and each tingling

Change of mood, then I catch the puddles glisten

Sh-h-h-h!

There is no thrashing.

Only bright silence

And the breaking quiet scream

Of the beam

Of the sun.

Thus

Comes the refreshing

Salvation of soul

That says today I don’t die.

In the sky

Shines a sun.