Poetry

I sit on a rogue boulder      high in alpine fields           reading Gary Snyder. My mind in the Rocky Mountains,      I watch blue glaciers blanketed with toxaphene           running away from the heat. I reflect on the silvery river,      mirror of change, below. Turn north, eye to the swollen river-sea      mouth where…

The water. Only the flashed water. The water in the river.           Nothing but the flowing water, not even (shore) or (overhanging branches), just the water in            & of the river. The water moves from Hiroshima but stays, grayblue, browngreen, the infinite divisi-           bilities of yellows & cherry reds all suffused with shadow, the…

Tell me about the difference between Washington and Moscow. I want to know how girls open their mouths to speak over there.  How their skirts swoosh in the deadening zephyrs of October and           starlight glints through chicken-wire fences, interlocking around the crumbling           schoolhouses and the new handsome billboards. Tell me about your cathedrals…

Old is this rushing of rain down the bush branches, the droning of grouse in the red dawn of summer – old is this our talking: of the yellow fields of barley and oat, the herdsmen fires in the wet, windy loneliness of autumn, of potato digging time, and of the sultry heat of summer,…

  Do you remember our earnestness our sincerity In first grade when we learned to sing America The Beautiful along with the Star-Spangled Banner And say the Pledge of Allegiance to America We put our hands over our first grade hearts We felt proud to be citizens of America I said One Nation Invisible until…

  I’d like to be like Whitman & not let anger resentment despair my eye from Beauty born of itself burning with light streaming from my pen Odes not only to Love but Love made of Love Permeated with & emanating total pure Love The descriptive rolling road blistering jewels reflecting oceans of understanding faces,…

        Poem Written During and After Hurricane Sandy                And you know that Tilt-a-Whirl down on the south beach drag?                I got on it last night and my shirt got caught And it kept me spinnin’, they didn’t think I’d ever get off                          –Bruce Springsteen, 4th of July,                                 Asbury Park (Sandy)…

Poetry! With in- person poetry readings curtailed by Covid 19 restrictions, this time of Zoom, Skype and Facebook readings has become an opportunity for poets and poetry fans to meet across lines of state, national and even ocean boundaries. Via such online gatherings as Cultivating Voices, I have “met” poetry colleagues throughout and beyond North…