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

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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.

Overwhelming Forces

The invading army came early;

Early it came,

With saturation bombing at the dawn;

Covering the dawn with so much haze

The haze blotted out the sky.

But we thought we were ready,

Ready when it came

For it came with lesser forces.

Although the forces saturated the ground

Our ground could not be taken.

We could move.

We could mobilize,

We could get about

And be resupplied.

But our weather scouts had been in error.

An error in the chill

And this chill changed this rain.

Now this rain was thunder snow

And on this error early we are snowbound.

Photo: The Canal, Lewes, DE, January 2011, taken by the author.


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Lightning Strikes

I can see the neon in the bar

Across the canal.

And the lightning strikes

And the water stirs.

She wears that favorite dress.

The rain is blowing straight.

And she must have gotten wet.

Restraints are loosening up

As lightning strikes.

It is red blue neon in the bar

Where the shadows drink

Near an empty table.

And it puddles on the floor

The dress she doesn’t wear.

I see the moored boat bob

In the neon from the bar

And drink my whiskey neat

Until the lightning strikes.

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Let's explain a little about this one.

My wife and I spent a couple days and nights at The Inn on Canal Square in Lewes, Delaware back on January 24, 25, 26. This is a very nice little hotel in a nice little town. We have stayed there at least three times now. This year the weather turned frightful. It rained all day on the 26 until it turned to sleet about dinner time and then to snow. It was a large snowstorm to the North back where we lived, about 12 inches.

I was sitting in the Inn looking out the window. It was dark and there was thunder and lightning to go with the snow. It was very moody and sinister in a way. I had the thought, "I can see the neon in the bar across the canal." I picked up a pad  that my friend, Ron had given me (it had his picture on it) and just wrote this little poem. I think it has an ominous feel.

The woman who appears in the movie a couple times is my wife. I use her a lot for book covers and illustrations because she is pretty and she was once a model. Other than that, the poem is a fiction. My wife was not having an affair, I was not sitting in a bar "drinking my whiskey neat". That is not my thing at all.

Note: Since I originally published this poem at Poetry Vortex I found some people were confused by the subtext. I have since rewritten a couple of the key lines, which are what are printed here. If you play the video you will hear the original. Hopefully the light changes make it clear about who is who, who is doing what and who is where in this ditty. (6/2/2011) 

On a Trail Few Find

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Riot

It seemed to come quietly.

Not unexpected you understand,

There is a history of such things,

A cycle, a turning of leaf.

It didn’t come in heat.

No, there’d been a bit of coolness in the land,

We were past the sweating,

Past that grief.

It just dawned one morning.

A shift of time, like hourglass sand.

A sudden breeze that drew up the eye

And then a riot of relief.

All across the horizon

A giant blazing waving rainbow band

The splattered pallet of changing leaves

Colors beyond belief

And as suddenly as they burst upon us,

With a display short and grand,

The colors were all stolen

By Jack Frost, the chilling thief.

Now in the riot aftermath

I rustle across the yard and stand

In the brown and brittle corpses I must rake

To my chagrin and grief. 

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All photos by the author.

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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Requited Love has Limits

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The poem was written last year actually, back in that February when we seemed to have one blizzard after another. The photo on the left was also from that period.

The film was shot on February 22, 2011 as we got hit with about five fresh inches of white stuff overnight. We have been under snow most of this winter. I couldn't get back on the hiking trails for a couple weeks because they were so packed down with ice. Last weekend we finally got rid of the stuff, and then the Tuesday after phloomph! A new storm buries us again.

 “Requited Love has Limits”

From the collection, "New Castle Linesman"

Cain & Abel & Ishmael & Isaac & Esau & Jacob & Today

Acrid vestige

Smoke cloaked carnage

Hell’s residue remarks the ruins

Eyes blink open to reality

Souls burned, broken, buried, blown to acuity

Ages’ cinders

Never blow clean

Death-soaked soil germinates its filthy seed

Divided from the first jealousy

Until the final trump

Shocked streets in a

Time without pity.

Illustration: Photo by N. S. M., Iraq, 2003

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When I was Young I Played with trains

Over the border where only woods once were

Are the gray lands on a once country road

Developments landscaped and carefully planned

With rocks and ruts, rills and artificial streams

Upturned dug out stones transformed to fortress walls

Gazebo porches laced with gingerbread trim

And mailbox crosses like the fields of Flanders

When I was young I played with trains,

Lionel and American Flyer

And quite often I would go to the five and dime

And spend my allowance on another kit that snapped together,

And then, I too, lived in Plasticville.

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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.

Wind

WIND

A Double Acrostic

Silence filled both hill and holloW

Perpetual emptiness enticed I

Icy winter seemed a yearlong seasoN

Repeating dully throughout all my minD

It was the slate colored cloud that was I

Then through this valley blew a reasoN

It was a mystery stirring my spiriT

Not just the breeze that chilled me througH

This was deeper, something seeped inside mE

Held my heart tight within its angel fistS

Eased the flame I stoked under the deeP

Wicked furies against past hurts that I

Imagined caused my agony and feaR

Now forgiving all who punished me, I

Danced away under God on lighter feeT.

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Display

A Haiku

Popping blossoms burst

Silent flowering fireworks

Celebrating spring.

In the City of Change

You will find me reading this at the bottom of the post. 

Literature of life was learned on trains.

Poetry to the beat of the rail seam,

In the trickle of rain,

The rising steam rhythms from summer heat;

Crackles of ice off long cold station gutters under strains

From winter snow piled deep upon the roof.

These teaching me all the beauty and pain nature sows

From which reap pleasure and vice.

In my life of change in a time of change

The streets were colorful as flowers bloomed.

Posters swirled and glowed while

New music boomed with meaning, with cause. Cool,

But laced with care, Accepting all the people in full rage

Against the bloody pool of war and hate.

And I struggled to paint upon the page each hero

And each fool I met while there.

In the park in the dark passing shadows

Change with the changing hour and the seasons.

In ragged second store dress,

Stocking runs, bell-bottom denim, dour

Pea Jacket blue. The men who love men; Druggies on their prowls;

Hippie girls with flowers in their tresses;

Poets and writers and actors and pals adding to

The bowers where my words grew.

Changes came into the city of change.

The nightlife shifted streets. Head shops went dark.

Psychedelic posters dimmed to new art.

As Hippies came from Beats, they went to Goths.

Rittenhouse square is where now old men range.

They occupy the seats and sing no songs.

So though I trod old walks and find them strange, Memory’s

Glow entreats their tales like moths

That I attempt to change back to butterflies.






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Monday in the Park with Eugene

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The man lay on his back in the center of the green.

He appeared from nowhere to lie still upon the grass.

Had he fallen from a silent plane to some odd death

Ignored and unnoticed by the walkers that pass?

What a strange sight across the expanse of open ground.

His arms are thrown straight back, like old discarded clay poles,

Awaiting some Good Samaritan to check his pulse.

But no one will approach the man to save their souls.

Strollers go by in their noontime lunchtime procession

Circling the neo-brick sidewalks without a glance

At this fallen forgotten wayfarer among them.

He is but a woeful stranger, why take a chance?

Eugene sits on the splintery surface of a bench

Chasing an occasional yellow jacket away

And eating his lunch and watching over his book top

The man still so still upon the grass where he lay.

The sky is high and the trees are a bright Kelly green.

The day is toasty beneath the yellow noontime sun.

The man jumps to his feet and waves his hands over head.

Just another jogger stretching out for his run.

Eugene marks his place carefully and closes his book.

He pauses one last moment to enjoy the quiet scene

With a sense of adventure lost, he walks back to work,

Ending one more Monday in the park with Eugene.

Cityscape

I am a triangular building

No longer foursquare.

When they took down that side

They removed a retaining wall.

I am an old multi-height building

With stored, up the stair,

Piled and labeled in the

Attic, all angers I recall.

If the indifferent modern builders

Place more boxes there,

The supports won’t bear the

Stress and the upper floor will fall.

Crumpled cinder blocks in weedy lots,

Rusty beams laid bare,

Unwanted property

Latest victim of the wrecking ball.

I am a triangular building,

Cracks everywhere,

Chips in my foundation

And suspicions dust my hall.

Photo from the City of Bellington, Washington

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Rivercreek Mystery

I have inhabited its banks for sixty years.

Photographed its waters while balanced upon its rocks.

Waded through its shallows and swum its deep still pools

Where those same rocks dammed the flow and calmed the rapids.

Seen its torrents in torment from terrible rains, furious at the thunder.

Seen its floods, fat and full, tolerantly awaiting the tempest to be through.

Seen it dried by summer deficiency to a ditch, stripped of its drift and undressed to it sediment.

A furrow burbling throughout my environs,

Who are you?

I have heard its entitlement for sixty years.

Heard its intoxicating reiterations echoed through the Valley,

Memorialized at a Battle, displayed in a riverside art museum,

Flattered by a hundred parks and roads, housing developments

And disparate other places.

An identifying location of my living,

Who are you?

I have spoken the Brandywine for sixty years.

Are you namesake of Andrew Braindwine, settled on your banks before Francis Chadley’s son John famously contravened your width?

Are you the unexplained corruption of Brandwyn, who dwelled alongside your stream?

Are you of Dutch descent, christened by the wreckage of the good ship Brandewijn that dumped its Brandy cargo in your mouth three hundred odd years ago?

A lifeline across the palm of my land,

Who are you?

I’ve crossed your winding path from Modena to Whitford, from Fallowfield to Uwchlan, from Bucktown to Glenlock,

To the stones of a hundred graves bearing names:

The Talbots and the Downings and the Bruners and Townsleys and the Wilsons and Browns.

Families floating like flotsam through my veins.

Sometimes a creek and sometimes a river,

Who are we?

On the Road of Myself

Do you know whom I saw today?

Myself down an ancient country road,

A twelve year old looking around a curve.

I didn’t know whether to lead or follow,

For I knew the road all too well.

I knew each loose and tripping stone,

Every broken jarring pothole,

Every rut and hill to its destination.

I could show where the mudslides were,

Where the high grass hid the carnivores.

I knew the distances from day to night,

The long lasting stretches of exposure,

The asylum of sheltered sites,

Waterholes of sanctuary

Where gathered each fellow journeyman

On this over-traveled road to desperation.

I met myself when I was young

And decided that I would follow

The boy I was once, not the man he is.          

I promise not to cry out directions

When he takes a different turn

I’ll be silent at each mistake

And embrace the unknown path taken

And look ahead in joyful anticipation.

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