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Category: Poems

Poems written by me.

Since Lonesome Dove

April 4, 2014 • • 7 Comments

Between prairie fires, buffalo
and wind few trees could live
here. The ones that did take root
and survive grew tall over the grass.
We stopped the fires, and the buffalo
are gone. Now fences provide
shelter for saplings to grow.
But when I drive up 183 toward
Abilene sometimes an oak catches
my eye, a tree, hundreds of years
old. Settlers would have known
this tree, Comanches too, I’m sure.
And ever since I read Lonesome
Dove, I can’t help but wonder
what horse rustlers may have been
hanged from its branches, their legs
twitching in the space above
the wildflowers blooming.

—

PAD 2014 #4: Since… | We Write Poems #207

Sticky Note

April 3, 2014 • • 1 Comment

I could tell you of the dappled sunlight
shining through thorny green trees,
the acidic soil and maybe a bright tropical
bird that lands in the branches before
fluttering away from some fruit picker’s
tired hands. Then the highways, the gray
interstates and the trucks that rumble
through time zones into the past. Eastern
to Central, the hours passing, the clock
resetting. I could also back up and speak
of processing plants where hourly workers
perform the mundane alchemy of phase
change, the solid becomes liquid. Poetry
is so ambiguous, you can’t help but wonder
what conclusions you might draw from this
obscured message, so I’ll clarify
and write it out in plainer mundane words
on a yellow sticky note: Could you pick up
some grapefruit juice on the way home?
Oh, and some cat food too. Love you.

—

PAD 2014 #3

Origin Story

April 1, 2014 • • 2 Comments

There is the blank page
or screen, the twisty open

road, the still surface
of your favorite pond.

Consider the rocks
at your feet, which one

will you throw in? One
is good for skipping, another

will make a loud plash,
and one might just hold

enough mass to create
a singularity as it rockets

down to the dark bottom.
A new universe is born.

The characters you imagine
may live and love and die

and debate your existence
while they’re young

drinking with their friends
what passes for coffee

in their pond bottom
universe. They’ll never know

how you wanted a second
chance, why you never said

goodbye, or where you left
your car keys this morning.

—

PAD 2014 #1

In Your Voice

March 26, 2014 • • 4 Comments

Tell me how the fog whispers
rivulets of water down your arms,
tell me of the rushes gently
bent beneath the weight of blackbirds,
and the dust and craters written
on the surface of the other planets
and their moons, tell me
of the fishes drowned in air when
the egret pulls them from the pond,
and tell me of the broken clouds
scattered restless across the sky,
tell me all these things again
so I’ll know in your voice all
the wonders that surround us. 

—

OPP #10: Jake Adam York & We Write Poems: We Wordle #11

Stopping by Tharsis on a Dusty Evening

March 3, 2014 • • 2 Comments

When all my days have turned to rust,
The poison wind begins to gust,
And strange colors purely Martian
Fill up the sky with choking dust.

When the air begins to thicken
Like a scene from science fiction
I lose sight of Tharsis Montes,
And embrace this redding vision.

Down in Noctis Labyrinthus,
Cut off, alone, I find solace.
Within the planet’s ancient scar,
I marvel as the sky turns ferrous.

The lovely dust darkens the stars
Then blocks the Earth that once was ours.
And now there is nowhere but Mars.
And now there is nowhere but Mars.

—

Not long ago, I had my students write poems using Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” as a model. I decided to have a go at it too. I’ve been reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.