REQUIEM
“There is nothing sad about an empty shell.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
My
poetry
is the shell
I leave you now.
It’s spiralled substance
all I’ve known of life and love.
See how it winds, and ever opens
stained with all the colors of my growth
and every gift and every touch of all of you and more
Hold it to your ear
you may hear the ocean
POETS PILOTS AND COWBOYS
A poet will try to dissect the world
and he’ll try to show you each part
and he’ll write it all down with a pen
that he’s dipped in an old carin’ heart
While pilots have the eyes of a hawk
and a strut in the way that they walk
and they give all that’s in them to give
and they live every moment they live
And most cowboys are gentle not loud
and they’re not all that good in a crowd
and they talk like they’re about half asleep
but what they know boys and girls
they know deep
MONA LISA
I’m so thankful you were there
like a Mona Lisa fair
To show me things I’d never see
and to model for my poetry
Which is not to compare
the artist or the style
But only to confirm again
the value of a smile
WORD DIVISIONS
You can know your native language
and still feel all alone
as pilots talk to pilots
in a code that’s all their own
Yet not even one to one
can they share that love of air
or touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there
Sailors talk to sailors
of wind and sail and rope
of nights upon the ocean
of courage and of hope
Yet the words just can’t convey
their love of sea and air
nor touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there
And though cowboys talk to cowboys
in a special kind of drawl
there’s still a space between them
the words can’t tell at all
Not those nights of cold and stars
with coyotes on the air
nor the call of open spaces
with the fear and beauty there
Watch as lovers talk to lovers
in ways only two can share
as they build between them
a framework light and fair
While a web that’s spun of maybes
hangs so fragile in the air
that one false word can shatter
into pain, the beauty there
And yet
There are still some crazy poets
out riding hatless in the sun
still trying to do the very thing
we all know can’t be done
Still Quixoting for a language
that can speak to everyone
FOR THE POETRY
The ups and downs of loving you
may grind me up before we’re through
And my friends see a victim, namely me
but then again it just might be
that I’m only in it
for the poetry
EXCLUSED
Erato can be more than a bit erratic
and daily living lead to static
So sometimes when my lovely muse
seems my tender soul to abuse
and my simple mind confuse
I seek some gentler, kinder muse
And somewhere warm to sing the blues.
(and sometimes a little booze)
Whereupon my main muse, is not amused
and lets me know she feels abused
and certainly, not sufficiently exclused
and it’s choose! choose! choose!
and it’s choose! choose! choose!
As if, having been chosen
a poet could still choose
POETRY
I have this special picture
of poetry at times
that goes so far beyond
all the words and rhymes
I see the poet picking
the emotions and the thought
then sifting, sifting, sifting,
to clean what he has got.
Then compressing into form
with all his skill and might
the essence and the heart
of his sacred inner sight.
And there it sits upon some page
holding love or silent rage
endless treasure there to find
all you have to add is mind.
And it will grow and grow
how far only you will know
for there may be in that verse
enough to fill a universe
Aye … sometimes enough to expand it.
DARK EYED LADY
An instant connection
with richness and light
that’s deeper than centuries
and warmer than life
Though if death’s darkness
is as welcoming as this
no wonder people hurry
to sink into that bliss
And though I’m pretty sure
I’m not ready to be dead
I’d like to sit by those waters
and rest my weary head
And drop pebbles of my poetry
just to watch the ripples spread
SHEEP IN THE NIGHT
It was in the old Taos Hotel in New Mexico. I had just spent
the night there on my way back from the Light Institute in
Santa Fe, and picked up a book in their little reading room.
It contained this wonderful description.
A poet is something strange and apart, a favourite of the gods, who have bestowed on him an extreme sensitiveness and sensibility,
like open doors and windows, to subtle and delicate impressions that but bruise themselves against other men’s walls; these he captures ad coaxes to sing to him, and intoxicated by the beauty of their melodies builds for them a golden cage and feeds them on honey from the sweetest flowers in his garden: till they in their happiness become so musical, fancying themselves in heaven , that Jove confers immortality on them, and swinging in their golden cages they sing sweetly forever, lifting up the hearts of men in every clime and generation.
As I read in the lobby a lady sat down opposite me in a comfortable old sofa, about four feet away across a gently rugged coffee table.
I had heard the desk clerk greet her as she entered and ask her how the writing was going. We smiled at each other as she sat down. There was a warmth and a recognition in the smile and a knowing that we would each have liked to say something, but we didn’t.
I really would have liked to share the paragraph with her,
but I didn’t.
Later I passed her and a companion having lunch and we again shared the , “Hi, old friend I’ve know forever,” smiles, but didn’t speak
A couple of hours later I was sprinting across the street on the way back to the hotel when a car stopped to let me cross in front of it. It was her again. This time we both laughed and smiled and went our separate ways.
Maybe we were laughing at fate and it’s three good tries, and
our ability to ignore them all, or the lack of courage that had
allowed us to pass – like two sheeps in the night
FORCED RHYME
Pardon me pardner if my words don’t rhyme – all the time
but sometimes they just don’t fit worth a hoot
And I’ve never like shoving my size ten foot
in a size eight boot
Or a longhorn in a
calf chute