in this day and age
dealing with health insurance
worst disease of all
“All complaints about life today will be ignored unless they are submitted in the format of elegant haiku poetry.”
q&a
quotation & answer: my response to someone else’s quoted work
Sepulturæ
Our bodies are the burial grounds of dead time.
“Time! where didst thou those years inter
Which I have seene decease?” —Wm. Habington
Fresh air & birdsong
An open window is good company, like the burning candle of Lichtenberg.
“Man loves company even if it is only that of a small burning candle.”
Poems that stick with me
Watering the hibiscus
this afternoon —
its weary
parched-green leaves
wilting
in this too-early April heat —
I saw a gecko
who
climbed up the side
of the splintering planter box.
My first split-second
thought —
Alice Walker’s garden gecko.
Crouching,
perfectly still —
the both of us —
I stared at it
and took in
the wonder
of it all.
It didn’t move —
was it asking
for some water?
This bliss,
it was my Paradise.
Gray, rough-coated
nature —
staring right back at me
a foot from my face.
Slowly I moved the hose
just an inch in its direction.
Walker — I’d already
named it Walker —
disappeared so fast
I didn’t even see
it go.
I wish it would’ve stayed.
I had water to give
and troubles
to wash clean.
referencing my favorite Alice Walker poem — “Going Out to the Garden,” 2011, in The World Will Follow Joy: Turning Madness Into Flowers, 2013
Deep calleth unto deep
great mysterious
multitudinous
voice of the sea —
a composite of all
sounds of the world
brought down
by all the rivers
in their courses
through the lands —
all the sounds
the earth utters
to the heavens
in its daily life —
the tinkle and drip
of pellucid springs
hidden deep in
remote hill countries —
the rattling laughter
of summer streams
with rustling leaves
and piping birds —
the deep whisper
of the woods and
the boom and roar
as they wrestle
with the winds —
the crash of waterfalls
echoes of mountains
the rush of storms and
roll and peal of thunder —
the merry shouts
of playing children
commingled murmurs
of manifold labor and
brooding world-spirit —
the clatter and
grinding of mills
the tumultuous
straining voices
of busy towns —
the world-embracing sea
has taken in and blended
and harmonized all these
into its own eternal call —
as you, child of the world
sit there and listen
your own comes back
to you in that mighty voice —
deep calling unto deep
the soul of the sea
to the soul of the man —
________________
Ecob began his sermon: “I have long wanted some one whose soul hears, to write a poem on this subject, the call of the sea.” The good reverend already had the contents of the poem right there in his prose; I simply set it free for him and sincerely hope that the new creation is to his liking.