summer’s iron hand
beats me with light
with heat
my mind winces
whipped dog shying
hiding in darkened corners
then, for a few hours
clouds bring respite
moisture’s brief touch
salves my skin
saves my soul
Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’
It Doesn’t Take Much
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, Poetry, vignettes, Writing on 21 Jul 2017| Leave a Comment »
Ending It
Posted in Writing, tagged 2016, creative writing, New Year's Day, new year's eve, Poetry, vignettes on 30 Dec 2016| 5 Comments »
I did not wind the clocks this month. They tick down to silence, measuring out the year’s last hours with ponderous chimes.
This New Year’s Eve, the house will be quiet.
No television. No dropping ball. No music. No crowds.
No friends. No crackling fire. No pop of effervescent wine. No clink of crystal. Not even the ticking of a clock.
All will be silent, and I will sit on the stoop in the frost-rimed dark beneath the moonless sky and will wait.
Listening.
I want to hear it, you see, and want no other sound to interfere.
I want to hear this obscene alliance of Time and Death, this year that has gorged itself on family, friends, and icons, that has snuffed out lights of culture, killed dreams, thwarted hope, I want to hear it die.
As it lays before me, I will kneel at its side. I will lean into its abattoir scent, my ear close to its gasping mouth. I will hear as it exhales its final breath into the void.
And if it does not come, if at that silent stroke of twelve this baleful year somehow breathes on, then as I ring in the New Year, I shall wring out the old, my hands around its throat.
This year shall end, if I have to do it myself.
k
When the Dark Trees Sizzle
Posted in Seattle, Writing, tagged creative writing, Poetry, quiet living, seasons, Seattle, urban wildlife, vignettes on 20 Oct 2016| 2 Comments »
I walk to work
The same hour each day
And make a time-lapse film
Frame by frame
To capture the passing year.
Buildings fall into vacant lots,
Rise from the rubble.
Storms flash overhead.
Cars blur past
Dreary commuters
Taking dreary steps
Toward dreary jobs.
But along the sidewalk,
Sweetgums grow
Tall, stately, serene,
Life in the grey and black canyons.
In winter, they sleep.
I walk wet pavement
Beneath dark, dripping skeletons.
With springtime sun,
Acid green buds
Burst open in an eyeblink
To shake new leaves
In the morning air.
My summer path leads
Beneath crinoline branches,
Silken leaves rustling,
Lazing in the light.
Autumn comes and the sun,
Tired out by long days,
Grows tardy.
The sweetgums sport fall fashions and,
For a few brief frames,
The sunrise and I,
Bleary-eyed,
Collars turned against the season’s chill,
Walk the streets together.
The sky is a purple shell.
The air is still.
The trees are dark,
Their branches garbed in orange and rust.
They do not rustle.
They do not shake.
They sizzle.
Deep within them, hidden by dying leaves,
A thousand starlings wake.
They greet the sunrise with
Gricks and whistles,
Creaks and pips.
I stand smiling
Beneath a thousand chittering mouths,
Listening to
The sound of butter in a hot skillet.
Sizzle. Pop. Hiss. Flutter. Zing.
A few more days,
A few more frames,
And the sun lags behind me.
The sweetgums now are silent,
Branches laden with sleeping birds.
Later still,
Once the trees drop their leafy frocks,
The starlings leave the city to winter’s cold,
And once more I walk alone
Beneath dark and bony boughs.
k
At the Limit
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, ocean, Poetry, seashore, simple living, vignettes on 05 Oct 2016| 2 Comments »
I walk the wavering limit of sand and sea, the Pacific’s grey serrated edge. The wind, flavored with salt and sun-dried kelp, pushes me, smudging my glasses with briny thumbs. A foam-white gull hunkers down against the wind. It glares at me with a yellow eye, wary but unwilling to move as long as I keep my distance. Plovers weave up and down the sand, dancing with their watery partner, piping and whistling. At my approach, they burst upward in a seething cloud of wings that veers drunkenly along the shore before settling down at a safer distance.
The waves hesitate, gathering their courage, then rush up the sloping shore. The first one covers my feet, the second my ankles, the third, calves. The water shocks with skin-tightening cold, but once the waves caress the sun-kissed sand, they recede with warmth and slip gently out to sea.
It is low tide, the time when the ocean rummages through dark cupboards, searching for trinkets and loose change to toss up on land when the next advance begins. Past offerings make ripples beneath the retreating waves or lie bright in the water-dark sand. Razor clams, splayed wide like nacre butterflies, are brittle and sharp splashes of dark purple or brilliant white. The pale skeletons of sand dollars lie strewn about, all broken, metaphors waiting to be used.
I walk through the dirty, heavy-handed rip current and the calmer, cleaner slack. I feel the tug of the water, sense the shifting sand beneath my feet. I taste both sea and earth on the ceaseless wind.
This is the edge, the limit of the world, the place where both land and ocean end.
Or begin.
k
Too Late
Posted in Writing, tagged friendship, personal value, Poetry, Relationships on 20 Sep 2016| Leave a Comment »
Cats have their signs.
The twitching tail.
The flattened ears.
So do I.
Know me?
You’ll see them.
Esteem me?
You’ll heed them.
Else
No fireworks.
No tirades.
No hiss and lashing claws.
Just silence
And the snick of the closing door.
Too late.
Too late.
Call it what you want.
I no longer care.
Cats have their signs.
k
Until Today
Posted in Writing, tagged cat memes, creative writing, Poetry, vignettes on 25 May 2016| 10 Comments »
fur of satin midnight
she is ever
aloof
wary
silent
an island of comportment
her tail-wrapped feet situated primly
at the boundary of our
all-too-human bustle
amber cabochons
blink in the sunshine
observing
studying
from the doorway
from the top step
intrigued but uninvolved
present but apart
until today
when she climbs up
nestles between us
curls in close
a nebulous shadow of rumbling warmth
dozing beneath my hand
k
The Drear
Posted in Writing, tagged creative writing, Poetry, Seattle, Writing on 14 May 2015| 2 Comments »
Dark, brooding clouds mock my mood
While I fight my inner black
they replenish the world
Perhaps if I
step out from under the eaves
look up into their steel-grey banks
their cleansing rain will wash the soot from my soul
—
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 