Hiraeth

Fall Migration

Fall Migration

Standing in the sun, watching the leaves
scuttling, skittering over the grass,
listening to the trees, their dry tongues,
chittering autumnal rumors of geese
preparing to fly, their movements,
as they gather, in accord with patterns
hard-wired genetically into their minds.

Animate, they are, and more than that
they are animated by ancestral spirits
that grace grass and water, walking,
delicate, between stark trees, calling,
always calling ‘away, away’.

We too are called, called to follow
the geese on their sky-way high-ways,
where their arrow-heads point us all
along the star paths
of their migrant nocturnal ways.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Fall Migration

Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead

writing by candlelight
the flickering flame
casting shadows
over thought and word

tell me what are shadows
but the false promises
festering in Plato’s Cave
or a fake finger show
projected on an unwilling wall

yellow and red the flames
sweet scented the smoke rising
from melting wax
my mind alive with memories

this night of nights
when family ghosts
drift through the room
and my childhood clutches
the red bag of my heart
with death’s cold fingers

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor
Day of the Dead


The Path Taken

The Path Taken

I followed a path and found my way,
but evening shadows led me astray
far from the uplands and the sun
to a land where darker waters run.

Where now, I ask, the summer beach,
salt water, cool, within easy reach?
I no longer hear the sea-gull’s cry,
white-wings lofting him to the sky.

I tread winter’s path of ice and snow
bent branches forcing me to stoop low,
a horse-shoe hare running out ahead,
behind, a white wolf fills me with dread.

My feet are cold, my steps are slow,
my muscles ache, my blood won’t flow.
Head spins, lungs throb and clutch at air,
my  heart fills up with dark despair.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Path Taken

A Grouse

A Grouse

It hurts. She is so far away.
I can barely hear her voice on the phone.
It hurts. I can only comfort her with words,
useless words, clichés that will never
take her cares away, how could they?

Ghosts of a nearby past drift silently by.
I wonder what can say to each other,
whether we should chat about the weather,
or whether to let silence hold sway.
I don’t want her to put down the phone
even though we’ll talk again today.

My body hurts with her hurt. I know my pain
will soon go away, but hers – I hope it doesn’t stay.
Outside the window, two red squirrels play.
Words break the silence: I’ll call
you later. Make the most of your day.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Grouse.




é

The Cry

The Cry

I had forgotten the who,
what, when, where, and why.
A t first, I didn’t hear the cry,
despondent, squeaky, like a mouse,
timid until it climbed up higher,
inspired by the grief within.

My own heart, paper thin,
could not confine the sobbing
that assaulted my own stronghold,
the oubliette, where everything
lay hidden, but never forgotten.

A pebble on the pond, the cry
rippled onwards and out,
became a whimper, grew into a shout.
What’s it all about, I asked
and took the cry to task
for rippling my pond’s tranquility.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
The Cry






Suit of Lights


Suit of Lights

I am a man of straw
shivered by raw winds,
frosted by the cold
enveloping this enigmatic body,
dry bones set rattling.

I walk with two sticks,
a stick man then,
not just a sick man,
as broken as this broken body,
old sack of out-muscled blood.

When the magic hour
descends, earth glows
with a different light,
and my world is transformed,
translucent, bright.

A touch of the almighty,
this beauty suddenly
surrounding me,
blessing me,
and all my doubts,
with this suit of lights.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Suit of Lights

Clichés

Clichés

I buried myself in an ice-cube.
I dug in so deep that nobody
could find nor touch me.

“Hurt yourself,” I told myself,
“hurt yourself
so badly that nobody
will ever be able to hurt you
again.”

Clichés:
cutting off your nose
to spite your face,
shooting yourself
in the foot, arm, or leg,
self-destructing
in so many ways,
and all clichés.

And me, alone,
everything cut off,
torn down, worn away,
visible, some days,
yet untouchable,
locked away
in this frozen land
where warmth
never flows
and winter
holds sway.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Clichés

Sisyphus

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



Quilting

Quilting

A man among many women,
I sit silent, feeling their eyes
explore my flesh, my stitches.

I need glasses now for delicate
needlework. To thread a needle
the workshop leader has a gadget.

It passes from hand to hand,
ties the perfect quilter’s knot.
My grandpa’s canvas sewing kit,

World War One Vintage, served him
before the mast and in the trenches.
From it, I take a small looped wire.

I remember when I could see and he
could not, hence his need for me
to thread the needle and knot the knot
that he could no longer knot.

Now I choose my tiny patches,
join them, stitch them into a square
and, ironed out, into the quilt.

We must sign them, and I do.
My name and little sayings
in Spanish, Latin, and Welsh.

The leader asks me to translate them
then writes the meanings down.
“Beautiful work,” she tells me.

“Where did you learn to sew?”
I close my eyes, sew my lips tight.
Some secrets I’ll never let go.

Click for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Quilting

Comment: I wrote this after reading the section entitled Quilt in M. Travis Lane’s book A Tent, a Lantern, An Empty Bowl (Windsor: Palimpsest Press, 2019). Poems that could double as paintings, proclaims the paragraph on the back cover. I have no such talent. My own poem is more of a memoir in the form of a narrative sequence. To each his or her own, or, in the modern parlance, to all their own. And a poet must do what a poet can do, each of us adding our own little offerings to the great sea that is poetry.