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Tag: poems

Distance

April 5, 2010 • • 4 Comments

The wind blew gray and humid,
the Gulf thick over the prairie,
catching trash and leaves and pollen

and a lone scissor-tailed flycatcher,
the first to arrive this spring, suspended above
a crepe myrtle, his tail forked, balancing
on wind, navigating toward a perch.

It seemed those last few feet against the wind
became as significant a struggle as the journey
of thousands of miles flown between
Central America and this narrow limb.

Such it is to be in the moment
when attention is required:
the scale of the task
falls secondary to action.

In this way, we can reach the tree
no matter how far we’ve traveled,
and, like that bird,
we can leave if we want
without a second thought.

The Radiological Work Permit Day Labor Line

April 2, 2010 • • 24 Comments

And each day the workers waited
for the renewal of their daily permits.

And when the clouded sky lightened,
they watched insects flicker and glow.

And old folks spat on the ground,
mumbling toothless legends of times

when all bugs weren’t lightning bugs,
when leaves burst forth from trees in spring,
when you could drink the rain and rivers,
when the sky was dark and there were stars.

And the memorists were shoved back,
kicked and beaten for their lies.

And everyone agreed with what we know:
since the beginning, all bugs have glowed.

—

A response to Read Write Poem’s NaPoWriMo prompt #2: The Old Acronym Switcheroo. I went with RWP as Radiological Work Permit.

I’ll be sticking with my usual no blogging on weekends routine, though I will still be doing NaPoWriMo, but the poems will be micro-poems posted at a gnarled oak, to which I do sometimes post on weekends.

Four and Twenty and Housekeeping

March 30, 2010 • • 3 Comments

Two things:

1. While I was out of town last week, I forgot to link to Four and Twenty, where one of my haiku was featured as the “Four and Twenty of the week.” Check it out.

2. You may have noticed the type on my site is larger. Ever since I redesigned the site in Jan 2009 to ditch the 2nd sidebar and widen the content area to accommodate larger photos something has bugged me about the font. I’ve tried different fonts but after reading iA’s The 100% Easy-2-Read Standard (h/t Dave for the link), I realized that what was bugging me was the size of the font relative to the expanded line length.

I tried a larger font, and I like the results. How does it look out there in blog land? Easier on the eyes?

On March 1st

March 25, 2010 • • 2 Comments

The grackles opened
Like gates in the trees
Shadow birds, eyes glistening
You could almost imagine
These noisy shades
Abandoning tangible birds,
Parking lots and steel dumpsters
In their odyssey through
Suburban woods,
Clacking and creaking
Like machines or clocks
Ticking away the last
Hoarse seconds of winter.

Sentences and Corrections

March 17, 2010 • • 6 Comments

The guy from the attorney general’s office
blamed the nouns, sources of all trouble—
people, places, things.

Combined with certain verbs—
assault, distribute, trespass and possess—
these nouns form gangs of complex sentences,
fragments of lives half-lived and run-ons
rambling through the detritus of car crash lives.

The simplest, though, tell of kids locked up,
looking out at the free, positions of attention
in the parking lot, half-listening
to mockingbirds refining their own syntax
as they mimic the ringing fire alarm
while we wait to go back inside
where we’ll try, again, writing

sentences that don’t mimic the past,
sentences that aren’t destinies.