The Buoyant Ocean (Off the Shores of Lima, Peru)

By the jagged rocks in the sea, and over the City of Lima, where the

       sky is high—

Each year the ocean draws closer, nearer to the shore—

By and by, unobserved the vulture and the condors fly…

As if, out to the horizon!

The waves smash against those jagged rocks, and the restaurant

       “Rosa Nautica”

The seagulls, estranged, move about restless—never any indication

       of self-pity…

The vultures extend their necks, looking down upon houses and

       parks, watching for signs of life to end:

As the sparrows and the doves walk a narrow ledge—

As those cadaverous creatures fly high to low, to and fro, from the

       buoyant ocean…

#3867 (4-22-2013)

Note: In this poem, “The Buoyant Ocean,” unwillingly and to a little disappointment, I find myself immersing a negative, perhaps it is not possible not to, but the vulture must eat: and I have seen this time after time, it is real: like the sparrow, or the dove or the condor, all must eat.  This of course complicates my soul, for I am for the sparrow more than the vulture, and you can see that of course. Why is this? I have no desire to claim the vulture, but I must write him in nonetheless; figuratively speaking, can one except a hollow tree?  I hunger for a filled one, one that is appealing to me, with leafage, but I have learned to accept what appears towards the end, as the end, and in this case the poem must have the vulture and sparrow in it. 

From Just One Girl (Washington High School, 1965)

All the breath and the entire world in one bag for just one girl! When I was young in my prime, when I was in High School because of one look, daily look from the hallway to the lunchroom, how far above that look was truth? Brighter than a gem, that she’d remember me after thirty-years. But what was not meant to be, was not meant to be; eyes whiter than pearls…in one look from just one girl.

#3863 (4-21-2013)

For Gail Johnson

The Dead Penguin (Magdalene Island, Punta Arenas, Chile, 2010)

The Author and his wife on Magdalena Island, July, 2010, exploring…

On Magdalena Island walking up a narrow path I come on a dead penguin, he blends into the earth like a log. I stand and look at him, there’s a hesitation in my live flesh: my God, a penguin is crying side to side—he’s mourning his mate! What is this I think: grief to God for the dead—a funeral song? Heavy breath comes out of me; my stomach feels as if the sky is going to fall.

       His head is arched back, its small eyes half closed, and he’s dying little by little, also.

       Wind blows cold ice through the air, here at the end of the world. His little flippers look like dwarf arms. There’s a 140,000-penguins here, all in tuxedos, moving about.  I want to reach out, touch the mourning penguin, but that’s forbidden; I simply move on.

#3854 (4-18-2013) Poetic Prose

Note: Figurative language means words used to something that you don’t really mean, such as “Tuxedos,” which describes the penguin’s black and white frames: skin or hides. And “flippers like dwarf arms” for the penguin they are nearly useless and are not arms but flippers; Darwin called them wings, how silly could he be.

In the Fields of Florence (An Elegy, WWII Poem)

In the Fields of Florence

Row on row

Marks the places of American

Heroes, from WWII!

Scarcely heard, amid the youth of today

Yet they cry out: “We are the Dead,

Shortly lived…

And here now we lie,

In the Fields of Florence!...

Take up the torch of freedom

Break no faith,” they exclaim.

“For we have died that you may live;

In the Fields of Florence!...”

#3865 (4-21-2013)/ Dedicated to PFC Frank T. Siluk, 1^st Tk BN; 1^st Arm Div; died April 19, 1945, in action; buried in Florence, Italy.

God’s Little Pests (An April Minnesota Poem

Winter has cleared up in Minnesota, the box-elder bugs are coming they know when the snow stops falling on the rooftops of houses: the house bends and stretches—the   chimney necks stop smoking and seemingly reach toward the sun. God’s little pests are man’s Minnesota almanac.

#3841 (4-14-2013)

Note: as I write out each poem,  let’s say this poem “God’s Little Pests” words run often times together, like images, it is a system forming in my head,  it may not be well in order at first,  but I seem to  ironed them out in time, and remember not all poems have to rhyme.