I think a new poem -
not because you stopped those apocalyptic downpours,
tornadoes, even,
and show a day of actual sunlight and clear sky.
Hatched during your mean streak,
the mosquitos are mid-summer strong.

I was writing about that sky
before you took it away from me
for two too-long weeks.

I was lying naked under your sun.
And, as you know,
I was looking good back then.
I don’t think I trust you enough
to get back out there now.
Thanks,
but I’ll just forget about how I look.

Not only that -
I was drawing again.
My pen and paper
suffused by sunlight,
I drew up a storm...

whitetail

four million years
moving through
this hidden place
it has always been yours
but I share your secret now

deep in your blood
you know it by heart
and your heart
is my target

you’re everywhere
these barren days
sex-crazed
leaving traces
on hard ground, on trees
making mistakes

showing yourself
is your fatal flaw
you’re giving yourself away
and you don’t know that

you can not help yourself
I understand this behavior
in my own flawed heart

sensing me
in your space
I sense you in mine
you’ll die here
as will I one day

but you are more beautiful
than I
this is why
you will be the first
to die

I really like this one Art, Thanks

sure thing. seems like this time of year gets me thinking...poetically.
thanks J.R.V.A.

I love the juxaposition of that poem - even though we know certain paths will bring a faster end, we cannot break from the past.

That's an awesome interpretation amonkie. I can really see it in a new light now that you mention it...
Thanks - sometimes even our own texts are not entirely within our comprehension.

running, bleeding

blood's flying out of you
like a flock of red birds
freed up from pressured spaces

you're weakening now
running for your life
as life leaves you
marking the trees
with inner scent

the dry woods
soaked red
leaf and root
will grow anew
warmed and fed
by your pass

your deer heart, unaware
continues beating
pumping out your life
as if you are the world
but you are not the world
you are yourself
and you are dying

your bright tail
signals surrender
I'll make this up to you
this beautiful murder
you will continue on
within me

building the blind

I use your eyes
and think as you
see the old place
as new

treading familiar pathways
carefully leaving no trace
no scent of my presence
in our shared territory

stepping back
breathing it in
observing the execution
of your ancient habits
comprehending the logic
of your journeys
and the reasons why
you move

finding your shapes
pressed in the grass
where your kind halts
before stepping
over the break
in the rusted wire

where you scrape
the soft earth
where you pass
and have passed
for millenia

your prints still fresh
the raw rubbed trees
all the feral signs
of your dangerous life

you are drawn here
by the fallen chestnuts
the white oak acorns
where the autumn sun
warms the side
of the southern hill
where you hide at noon
by the quenching waterway
the cool places where
I spot you
beneath the moon

the old paths
converge here
in this enfolding valley
this is where
I'm building the blind
on the earthen dam
above the small stream

behind two trees
I tie branches
to brambles
lay a cover of twigs
drape brown grass
level a spot

when I return
I'll sit for hours
watch the frost evaporate
admire the morning mist
note the insistence
of the woodpecker
and wait
for the flashing instant
I end your numbered days

this ineffable
special place
is not so unique
each foot
of living earth
is after all
a place for dying

You know....I do not hunt.

But Damn....you just made it seem a rather inspired way to spend a weekend.
Thanks

It's good to read more of your stuff Art. I need to keep an eye on this thread more often. You contunie to amaze and confuse, bedazale and enlighten. I really enjoyed the last one. It seems a rare thing for one to find such beauty in death. Though is it the hunter following the dear, or the bear following the hunter? Hum, something to ponder. Keep them comeing man. It's like intullectual porn for a metiphor junkie.

Thanks for the kind words, Seer666.

Every once in a while, I like to use words more carefully than I typically do. Glad these have some value to you. They're like stepping stones along a clear path for me. So much of our experience is verbal - including our thinking. I occasionally have a need to create some clarity out of the clutter, I suppose.

Awesome, Art. thank you.

Ghostly World

If spirits do roam
In these spaces
Between the slow burning up of suns
And the inexorable downward slide of gravity
It must look this way to them.

Where the appearance of death is brilliant
And things freeze white in solid air
The escape of steam from nostrils
Mistaken for the soul
Turns things strange
Like getting gasoline

Out under orange and yellow bays
Great bright stalls on greasy concrete
The living dead stand still
Fueling up, driven to wander
Risking everything to get back home

The signs surround me
They are quite beautiful
But I know, in my marrow
They are all about dying

I’m not going out there
They’re spreading rumors
About spring - even rebirth
But that’s a matter of faith

Wow, I had to read this a couple times to make sure I was grasping the poem, and it always is good to think about how others view our world.

Thanks, amonkie.
Just finishing up a new one here...

My Heart Attack

There’s a man I’ve yet to meet
He lives over at the next farm
Been there just about forever, they say

I see him, dressed darkly, sitting on his tractor
He can raise a thousand acres of corn with that thing
And he can cut them right down again
Staring only at his wheels

When we moved in here
I waved the first few times he passed
He never even turned his head
So I stopped waving

He’s a decorated veteran – a war hero
The subject of a Hollywood movie
These days though, he walks slowly
Out to the mailbox and back

The other day I passed him in my truck
He seemed to pause at that very moment
Stared in my direction
I almost waved at him
But he wasn’t looking at me

He had just mailed a letter
Maybe he was having second thoughts
I think he knows the weight of his words

I keep thinking I should go over there
Make his acquaintance
He’s knows my family
He’s visited my friends

One day
He may come
To visit me

here she comes

Setting up for spring around here. The flying wedges of geese point due north these days. There’s the occasional seagulls resting up in superstore parking lots. A few farmers are getting the jump on things by turning over newly thawed fields. And there’s little bulging buds on bare tree limbs.

The sky is lit by a higher warmer sun. Clouds puff up after descending from their high striations. Our road is a collection of muddy ruts swamped by thawing snowbanks. Most of last year’s gravel’s been scraped away by the plows of winter.

Got on my lighter jacket. Sus is wearin’ her fringe buckskin. Mimi’s in her lightweight western fleece. I’m writing fair weather poems and sus is out on the sunporch painting the landscape.

Yep. Winter’s windin’ down. Don’t matter what else is up its sleeve. We been through another year’s low down ride. And the tide’s on it’s way in ag’in.

Damn Art.....I honestly needed that "breath of Spring Air"....very nice

Art, this is simply amazing...
Wow...

J.R.V.A., that's a much appreciated statement from you. I'm pleased it struck a responsive chord...

My Heart Attack II

I saw him today
turning under corn shafts
he left over winter
for deer cover.

I had dinner
put out the dogs
and he was still there.

All I see now
is the tree of lights
suspended from his tractor
the beams shooting out
toward grey rows.

Standing against the slow advance
of his inevitable machine
stalks become sound
under invisible wheels
and the February moon.

He’s still out there.
By morning
the old crop
will be gone.

Damn Art....always a pleasure to read you.

Standing against the slow advance
of his inevitable machine
stalks become sound
under invisible wheels
and the February moon.

this was particularly well done.


thanx

...likewise, tecoyah.

always good to take in the work of another practitioner of the ancient art

Out naked today
Under the spring sky
I felt the photon fingers
Of the sun
Pulling hard.
I barely escaped
With my skin intact.

ART, i enjoyed that. Spring is certainly a time of renewal.

Your words conveyed the rays of sun with a graphic feeling. very nice.

Thanks, sweetpea...

It was remarkable enough to spur a new image...

more to come, I'm sure.

Coming from one already sunburned, that spring pull is just too strong to ignore - seems like we become naked in soul and spirit as well, to the changes in our lives that lie ahead.

Thanks, amonkie.
Seems my poetic year starts in the spring.
This image was notable as the first one of the (vernal) year.
More soon...

There is something very zenlike in your poetry Art. It covers the soul.

Appreciated, Astrocloud. Thanks.

So wonderful. Perhaps one day, when I am not so full of sleep, I will tear these apart and see what falls out.

Some of my favorite lines:

Isabel Gone
You were a murderess too
Bittersweet in my hand
This orange Monarch
Died young

Getting rough out here.
The cicadas of late summer are silent.
Their crisp skins, strewn around
mixed with acorns,
lifeless leaves.

^ when I was a child, I'd go around the neighbourhood in late August collecting the remains of the cicadas. I liked to think that they were fairy shells, despite how ugly some of the skins can be.

Fault for the Fall
How do you expect us to act
With such a wicked Mother?

What a perfect way to end. I love the connection that this poem, especially, makes between humanity and nature.

Your poems make me want to go walking. They're serene and thoughtful, hopeful and honest. Some of the best I have read all year.

Thanks, cellophanedeity - they are often - almost always - the result of walking through the world...

Nice, nice,nice....Thanks Art

dressing you with my eyes

I've been watching you very closely
for more than a month.

You're always up before me.
In fact, as far as I know,
You're always up.

You're there
when I awake
making yourself more lovely
right in front of me.

You do it so slowly.
I can't stare away.

New tones of green
cover your limbs.
Your body disappears
like the landforms
behind a peacock's tail.

Then suddenly you're adorning yourself
with cherry, lilac, and forsythia.

I can hardly bear
these differences between us.
You are the most beautiful thing.

Even I can see that.

Damn Art.....as always, inspired.

And I can only imagine the form of such inspiration.

thanks - the inspiration is all around me here, tec...

I could have been blue

I could have been you
On that walnut limb
At the center of the world.

I want you to wait
For my camera
I want your image
And to speak your name
As if by saying, “Indigo Bunting”
I could become you

And now with camera in hand
I look at empty air
Above the branch
Where you were

Beyond the grey-brown perch
Behind the green leaves
The sky is bluer now
From having held you