Eclipse
Was it a total eclipse,
or just a partial eclipse,
that sky the likes of which
I will never see again?
I do not want to see,
let alone experience,
the mushroom cloud
that descends from the skies,
then swells up again
to embrace them,
leaving my ashen body,
a bleak, black shadow
on a brick wall.
Meanwhile, back in my kitchen,
in the lull before the storm,
I wait and wonder if my world
and all within it
will be eclipsed.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Eclipse
Hollyhock
Is it a silken purse
made from the pig’s ear
of its seed pod,
or just a single seed
excreted by
an incontinent bird?
Its bruised
evening-sky hues
stretch their emperor’s
imperial purple all too thin.
In the late summer sun
it swallows one errant bee
in its leviathan mouth.
Sole survivor,
from a score of flowers
that once climbed
the seven foot,
eight foot stalk
to sway in the wind,
it stands on guard
against fall cold
and winter’s snow.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Hollyhock
Comment: I didn’t like the ending to the earlier version, so, when it came to reading it, I rewrote it first instead. I much prefer this version. Apologies to those who read the earlier words.
Sisyphus
Long gone, those good old days, dead and gone,
their centers collapsed in on themselves
unable to hold on to time’s hands
circling the clock of ages, that timeless rock.
Beyond these days, long days when light will fail
to enlighten, eyes will be dimmed, the burden
will grow heavier and even more heavy
with life lying in wait, to weigh us down,
always lying, and the lies themselves
more rocks added to the pile we must carry.
Carrying them is one thing. Rolling them up
this endless hill only to have them roll down,
again and again, forcing us to stoop once more,
not to conquer, but merely to live our lives,
to journey onwards, relentlessly, to endure
from the beginning of the end until the last,
and we must endure, will endure to the last.
“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.”
Albert Camus
Click for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Sisyphus
Birds of a Feather
Oh my, oh my,
how the days go rushing by.
It’s like watching birds that fly
or feathers falling from the sky
to lie at tree foot where you must
just let them lie to gather dust.
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Birds of a Feather
Grief
Grief leads us to the cliff’s edge.
It hardens our features,
brings tears to our eyes,
or turns our hearts into stones,
hard as rocks, cement blocks
that feel nothing.
Sometimes it pushes us
over the edge and we fall,
down, down, into a darkness
that never, ever seems to end.
Friends desert us.
Food is fruitless and fallow.
Our table top is a desert,
barren and bare,
with a lone and level
patchwork cloth that stretches
into far-reaching Saharas,
Gobi wastes of endless sand.
Who will resurrect the dying heart?
Who will hold it in their hands
and bring it pulsing back to life?
If you won’t do it for yourself
nobody else will care to try.
Think of the happy times,
the times when the sun shone,
the earth was warm,
and your life was a walk
in a garden full of flowers.
Then feel the sharp stones
beneath your feet and know
that joy and sorrow,
laughter and tears,
sun and clouds and rainbows too
will always grow
to lighten the lives
of all of us who dwell below.
Click for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Grief
The Way
Old Roman Road
Puerto del Pico
I sought the way and thought
I had found the way, but now
I feel I have lost my way.
Long walked I in shadow and sun,
hard Roman road beneath my feet.
Then I found bleached beach sand,
heard the sea-gull’s piercing sound,
walked sun-path, moon-path, bright
across a shimmering bay and knew
that by chance I had found my way.
Then came the way of ice and snow,
Hudson Bay parka, the ski way,
the snow shoe way of winter boots,
and still I believed, eyes wide open
that I knew I was still on the way.
Now my feet are old and slow.
Blood runs cold, bones ache,
head spins, heart is an ambush,
lungs throb and clutch at air,
head in hands I sit in despair,
hoping to be found,
draped over a shoulder,
brought safe to flatter ground,
comforted, and set again on my way.
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The Way
Monarch
I saw a monarch butterfly today.
A slow soul at summer’s end
slipping, fluttering quietly away.
This has become a regular trend:
scanning the obituaries every morning
in search of yet another lost friend.
Sad, this morning, to be mourning
the passing of someone I never knew,
a butterfly, lost, at the day’s dawning.
The news brings few things that are new,
with talk show hosts, all self-engrossed,
going on and on about the privileged few.
Monarchs and butterflies will perish too.
I soon will join them. Just like you.
Listen to Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Monarch
Losing Language
To lose your language
is to lose your dignity and your muse.
It’s to lose the power of self-expression
and to frustrate the longing soul
that flutters like a butterfly
striving to reach for the beauty of light
yet frustrated by the weight
of its now useless wings
unable to rise.
So much the soul sees at night,
wandering in dreams among the stars.
Memories of former rooms
where the old inhabitants still dwell,
shadows among the shadows,
some still gifted with limited
powers of speech,
but others, tongue-tied and silent,
and our chatter reduced
to a net of butterfly buzz words.
Oh for the freedom of flight,
for the liberty of my language found anew
and capable still of shaping and recreating
the world of silence in which I now live.
Based on a Welsh Poem by Harri Webb
Colli iaith a cholli urddas.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Losing Language
Orange and Green
The creative wells have run dry, especially the verbal ones, and this is about all I can do right now – a little bit of visual and hope for the best. I guess the creative waters will flow again and words flower, but until they do, I am just sitting here with nothing else to do.
Sound of Absence
It’s a lonely walk round the animal park,
the petting zoo with its animated young,
goats, sheep, llamas, alpacas, all of them
greedy and alert, ears pricked, eyes open,
munching away, hand-fed by the visitors.
Only the wind moves the swings today.
We walk in silence, but don’t stay long.
That little body that swung the swings,
those little feet that raced from place
to place at such a bewildering pace…
they are not here. We watched them board
the plane, fly up into the sky, head west
and home, and now we, the old folk,
abandoned, hold hands, and walk alone.
Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Sound of Absence
rogermoorepoet 