Poems

I like walking where the wind is rarely quiet
and the evening star glows brightly,
a consistent presence lying over the canyon
pushing the sun along, urging the moon
to follow its intense track like the creek now dusty
and disregarded until spring’s outburst of life.

The Texas plains have emptied out.
The people all are gone.
New Mexico's well are dry, and
all who could have said goodbye
a few of the old ones hang on still
high in the mountains they dwell
collecting what little snow

What will happen when we become you.
Is it the end of mustard on pastrami when
it hides from you behind the mayonnaise?
Will the mate to your black sock continue
to ride the shelf in the dryer. Will you wear
your flannel shirt beyond donation and
never change the sheets again.

I talk and they ignore me, letting me know where my keys are
when I really want to know the lottery numbers for Wednesday’s game.

I am a poem of fourteen lines of verse
who needs to have a rhythm to my life.
I prattle forth and sometimes may seem terse.
To me my sense of order seems just fine.

The back porch is cool this morning
with only the expectation of early fall.
The grass seems glazed with rain
although it’s only the morning sprinkler
forestalling the inevitable death cycle
when the grass will brown and
fall’s leaves will cover their hidden demise.
Yet still the cool promise of fall will arrive
for a short time before it heralds winter’s conquest.

Along the pleasant path I walk each day
No matter how I wander, I am free
An unseen hand protects me on my way.

I’ve begun to dream of water.
Cool, wet, luminous, nearly-forgotten water.
It’s rained once in eight-three days.
Only the sidewalk was wet, the blades of grass
too dry to absorb even the mild mist.

They say that those who can’t, will teach, for lack
of skills to write, or reach an audience
composed of peers. I cannot make a rhyme
or poem that’s fit to print upon a sign
for marketing or just to read in spring
when love is freshly green and grown like grass.

I imagine a place filled with light.
A place to which I can travel.
Cold burning star surrounding a planet
or a celestial body as bright as a star
I want to go to where I imagine
the stars fill the deep, blackened sky.

There are no words in my satchel
to write of the horses in the fields.
Their handsome faces turn my way
curiously questioning my intense gaze
through their Chestnut eyes unblinking.

From far beneath the frozen soil the iris pushes high,
Extending wide it reaches up to touch the sun and sky.

Yet in the greening of the grass, the snows of winter stay
as northern winds descend again to keep the spring away.

Fall arrives on the calendar,
But not in the sky where the sun
Punishes the earth with hoary fire
Refusing to absolve itself; summer
Remains, retaining its dominance
Of heated wind glazing the land.

When I am old with cloudy eyes
I’ll watch the birds ascend the skies
And if I fail to see their flight
My ears shall note their heavenly might
And if my eyes just can’t discern
My soul remembers all it’s learned

Fall arrives on the calendar,

But not in the sky where the sun

Punishes the earth with hoary fire

Refusing to absolve itself; summer

Remains, retaining its dominance

Of heated wind glazing the land.

Nearly a thousand miles south of the Rockies
lie the Amarillo Mountains, hidden thousands
of feet beneath the plains, peaks rising
to ten thousand feet.