A three-year-old girl
held a life-size Mr. ZIP’s
cardboard hand in her own
while waiting for Daddy
or an interior lobby
stoplight to change.
Can we go now?
These days, she
must be
my wife’s age.
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Copyright 2015
Tag: Poetry
CURTAINS
to embrace something with the wisdom of the final round
people crowding the boulevard in Baltimore
to watch Robert Kennedy’s funeral train pass
overhead
in that portrait of seven famed figures
Annie, turned to stone under a blue-jay feather
how that small town in snow looks more like Pennsylvania
or Midwest
than New England
Blake, the Muggletonian and lithographer
the surviving Beats portrayed
as Ginsberg tying a shoelace
would see something with the sharpness of the first time
all that baroque light over a cathedral altar
the cumulus effect
enveloping a solo deer
naked
in the garden
awaiting snowfall
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.
MUTED WITNESS
best known for our anti-war witness
we could do much more
individually and together
to summon others
to transcendental worship
* * *
if we hesitate to strip naked or don sackcloth
to march brazenly into parking lots
and through malls
or the courthouse
or legislature
to proclaim Truth
to those who reach for a Budweiser
the first thing
1st-Day morning
or so passionately decry anything
smacking of religion or church
how else do we extend the welcome?
maybe we’re just getting old
or sedate
or muffling passion
this is more important
than placing a notice
in the paper or a line in the phone book
if anyone remembers
* * *
there’s no invitation
without an address
or sign
or billowing aromatic
celebration
made visible
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.
UNLIKE THE USUAL
“George’s problem is he’s too affectionate
– he expresses himself”
one woman confided loudly
in a restaurant
unlike the usual complaint
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Copyright 2015
PRELUDE & FUGUE 48/
with fiddles and crows
tracing a map of yellow leaves
* * *
on a map of frosted snow
three crows with their fiddles
in the crown of their living
of a rock face map, frosted snow
three crows with their fiddles
in the crown of their living rock face
on a map, frosted snow, three crows
with their fiddles in the crown
out of their rock face, tracing some life
atop scree, another one at the bottom, wintergreen
~*~
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see all 50 Preludes & Fugues, click here.
HOW THE STREAMS CAME TO THE SEA
I come to the sea a stranger
a person of a different religion
learning to eat at one table
these days, one who dwells inland
as far as the tide retreats
the passion of the moon
with its heartbeat and home and
those who have been torn and uprooted
will sense this
no image holds the tide
the moon, then, must do
somehow resembling the moon I knew first in Ohio
and later, in sagebrush desert
all things who move furtively in the night
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of seacoast poems, click here.
DREYS WITHOUT LICHEN
stack neatly three cords of stove wood
for kitchen heating (ache, diddly ache)
with no idea how much they’ll need for winter
learn to use a variable-speed screwdriver,
far from expertly, while hanging drywall and doors
(ache, diddly ache)
the plumbers finally show for a day
installing a new boiler just before
the season’s first hard cold snap
and now, having switched, the price
of natural gas price shoots up
still, his Lady of Yard Sale Bargains cites
environmental advantages before
terrifying Halloween trick-or-treaters
and Big Brush Fire No. 2 reduces
three more huge piles to ash and
His Lady of Princess Pink costumes herself as a hippie
to his glowing relief, after the Britney Spears
she’d been threatening
but first, there’s the push to paint the new rooms
in the barn and then lay vinyl in its bathroom
(ache, diddly ache)
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Home Maintenance poems, click here.
SPIRAL SHELL
reading the inscription on your tombstone
an abandoned road soon becomes impassible
except on foot or horseback
dumplings, broiled, steamed, and fried involving pork, chicken,
Chinese cabbage, tofu. more ginger and any amount of
garlic, scallions, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts
a bronze bespattered snake
coils elegantly
through an alligator-skin sandal
nothing funny about us, just practical and direct
“maker dressing toe,” she
she was so bold
a mechanical hand made of maps and a yardstick
SHAKE
Edward Steichen’s portrait of Leopold Stokowski in profile
a human heart just one shade redder
a place to savor and crave
mechanical dancing dolls
shaving pennies
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set of Partitas, click here.
IN THE FINE PRINT
oh, stranger
you seem to expect a believer will forgive anybody
you seem to think a devotee must forgive everybody
you seem to presume a saint can forgive all
but it’s nothing you attempt in return
* * *
oh, stranger, there are conditions
according to Jesus
if you ask
we can begin
and if you express regret
and if you turn course
and do good actions
we can truly begin
if you want any forgiveness between us
we can begin gently working
according to Jesus
* * *
but if you think forgiveness is a license
to come back
the way you were, to continue harming
and hurting others
you’re mistaken
oh, sinner
forgiveness begins by admitting the mirror
Poem copyright 2016 by Jnana Hodson
To see the full set, click here.
WANT DO YOU WANT FOR QUARTERS?
All the fat girls in town
had congregated in this Laundromat
to giggle at a skinny hippie.
When they sat, mouths agape,
stomachs bulged more than their breasts.
Everywhere, there’s a pecking order.
The manager in her blue scarf and coat
fluttered in to chase neighborhood children out.
“They mess the place up. I don’t want them.”
Kids, kids, kids, she muttered
raking in quarters – all this bitterness
robed in garments of honey and bees.
As for me, another day,
another dollar, down the drain.
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Copyright 2015
Jnana's Red Barn 