with neglected stretches afoot this past so jammed with rocks juts up between ferns and trees tensing into some ongoing anxiety of unseen opportunities in the day and a traipse around the Quaker burial ground in Ellicott City perceives the stone meetinghouse now a private residence : suspect it was called Elk Ridge Meeting but no proof yet : even boulders where elk roamed or buffalo now a stone enclosure under fieldstone forest before a floating worship the midweek turn here tomorrow night’s a blessing while my suburban exile draws to some close : humbly all we still share
Tag: Relationships
Learning to read tide charts
There’s more than just seeing when high and low tides happen.
The moon cycle also needs to be taken into consideration.
Even when it’s cloudy.
Just listen to some powerful lines from the bared heart
The best poem I’ve ever read in nearly six decades of the New Yorker is one that wasn’t even presented as one of its two weekly poetry selections.
Instead, it appeared recently within a theater review, where the play under consideration reminded the critic “of the late poet Essex Hemphill, a master of frank desire whose smart, life-hungry speakers toss of lines like these:
I am lonely for past kisses,
for wild lips certain streets
breed for pleasure.
Romance is a foxhole.
This kind of love frightens me.
I don’t want to die sleeping with soldiers
I don’t love.”
A bit later comes a couplet from a different Hemphill poem:
I am beautiful.
I will endure.
~*~
My, how I admire the directness of those lines, their acerbic observations unencumbered by literary aspirations.
Yes, he skirts the imagist realm of so much of my own verse but somehow, to my eyes, averts any preachiness that can come from the subjects he’s examining.
What hits me the most is the clarity and intensity of his self-examination.
Yes, each time I return to these.
Proportions in proportion
so where are the agents at the end of this uphill trial if you meet the test only to pack away crates of hallowed vials and jugs to haul northward for further aging the first time? that truly is such a big butt for such a tiny face
Kinisi 119
the largely absent father
even when he was there
Dearest Evita, inevitably
the home trip was shorter than any desire worth pursuit followed by a week strip-mined between Wheeling and Zanesville where the alphabet winds down and begins again in Ashland or Barnesville, maybe in another language still here I’m settling down as a monk in my scriptorium or as a bootlegger distilling silos of citations and trophies or as a bachelor milking his own antiquity to that point where you no longer know if you’re any good or not, you’re just pushing what you have to your best abilities . not everyone comes back
Broken green class reflecting social glass aspirations
this urban world obliteration of vast scenery anticipates developments a few years down the road fostering the emergence of small operations but serious obstacles remain working notes yet, please stay tuned as I was saying, give everyone my personal greetings
Precocious precious Elise
back to drive across mountains and plains how well I remember unanticipated letters in my post box before phone calls from a colleague fed up with working in a field of little growth but with no desire to return to the daily buzzard “from what I’ve seen, for what’s demanded, our managers are far under-compensated” within major cities parallel to something I’ve been preaching the last thirty years amen hope you find welcome me too wishing upon that star
Zap, zap squared
whatever abundance before the eye rests under that spirit of being guided through the wall after waiting through dry periods when you’ve voiced those personal, esoteric why must it be myself or the other when feeling a drawing away to that which I alone happen to sense when working and nodded without anticipating any fulfillment except in so many conjectures now absolutely engaged in the hand of accomplishment you definitely pursue now so romantic exciting perhaps with some overlap perhaps you too understand
Quoting from a master of secret teachings
here you perceive it’s not within my nature to offer any spoken contention in the row of bricks other craftsmen would so often enwrap in false modesty if you can tolerate canned soup or a vulcanized cheese omelet, well, then you’ll also observe how turning together after so many years maybe occupied with survival in the rarified air the conundrum by God becomes devotion
Jnana's Red Barn 