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Books for Boys

Reflections
(Published in the Portsmouth Herald's "Random Acts of Poetry")

Where the stones always so smooth?
So unresisting to the fingers’ path?
They feel as though they were
as if rounded at the spinning of the world
so slick and firm in my palms
but they were not always so.

Time is the enemy of jagged edges
and nothing abiding stays the same
a stone lives only a season of the life 
of the sea and a wave is but
an ocean’s passing thought
the days of man are moments to a stone.

Did it hurt this wearing down?
I would like to think it did, but of this 
I have no memory; rocks feel no pain
but oh, the cold, the laying bare 
of the stone beneath stone
as the outer rock capitulates.

Easier, yes, to let the waters flow
over surfaces that offer no resistance
and easier still once the erosion
has begun, a leveling so gentle
you do not feel it abrade but 
the labor of ocean takes its toll.

The tide is persistent, defeated but for 
a day, or no just resisted. What hurry? 
Time is the ally of eternities, it can’t 
help but endure past days, past lives, 
past memories, as rivers empty into seas 
and oceans, their basins never fill.

Void begets void, and that wicked
old snake, his tail he swallows still.

First Time at the Library

Published in Public Libraries, March/April 2003.

My daddy said that I could pick

Most any book I see

From rows and rows and rows of them

Stacked high as two of me.

The books were falling off the shelves

And piled up on the floor

The lady there behind the desk

Was stacking even more.

I asked if I could take one home

She said, "Take two or three.

I have to put the rest away

And need the space you see."

She showed me every single book

That fell within her reach.

"Here's one for reading on the bus

And one for on the beach.

"Here's fifteen pets piled on a bed,

And here's a flying frog

A girl with pigtails long and red,

A teacher who's a dog.

"Here's one about a pig that sings,

A spider that can write."

So many, many, many books

Without an end in sight.

I trembled as I said, "I want

The one about a horse.

It's blue, I think," I said, "but I

Forgot  the name of course."

My daddy slowly shook his head

He didn't see much chance.

But then the lady stopped and stared

Like she was in a trance.

A thousand books piled all around

Ten thousand, maybe more!

Her eyes took in the lot of them

Stacked ceiling to the floor.

I thought that she had gone to sleep

So rigid did she stand

Then smiled so sweet, reached out and put

Black Beauty in my hand.

Hummingbird

Flitting, darting

A restless quest

To fuel a fire

That burns your breast

Seeking sweetness

For selfish glee

Bringing gifts

So heedlessly

 Your touch a trigger

You fire life

Igniting beauty

In vibrant strife

To equal you

In colors bright

They dazzle, dumbfound

And delight

But in tableau

Their beauty ends

Enlivened only

By the wind

Whilst you with

Generous energy

Prove a lovely

Vibrant Persephone

Their season ends

Those blooms of spring

And hummingbird

On fragile wing

Too soon I fear

You will expire

Sweetness smolders

Consumed in fire.

Erosion

(Published in the Portsmouth Herald's "Random Acts of Poetry")

I walked today beside the sea,

that was sparkling in the sun

in the wake of an ocean storm to see

what damage had been done.

The waves had carried so much away,

familiar dunes, niches had disappeared

the road that paralleled the shore

hung suspended in the air.

Shrub trees had risen, or so

it seemed, on roots that lifted high

like tip-toed dainty ladies intent

on keeping their dresses dry.

So much was lost it seemed

to me, mountains worth of sand

paid in tribute to Poseidon

a fatal loss of land.

Yet was the Earth diminished?

Was there an increase to the sea?

The shore, I found, stood on the seam

of two eternities.

Ten billion tiny grains of sand

ten billion water drops

armies ebb and eons flow;

the battle never stops.

Sorrow is a fluid truth

like tears tides rise, subside

endurance is made of stony stuff

like sand it shifts, abides.

Loss is the eternal shore

sight of a slow explosion

pain wears wounds that never heal

a perpetual erosion.  

Roots

Blues ain’t got nothing on country

who needs Chicago and Detroit City?

the notes they all began

in Memphis and Louisian

and they ain’t forgot

how to break a heart

down there in Tennessee.

Blues ain’t got nothing on country

cause in pain and guilt and shame

slice them how you please

all our hearts still bleed

whether black or white

by weight or height

we’s all about the same.

Blues ain’t got nothing on country

whether you’re in shades or cowboy boots

taking liquid comfort and pouring in

drinkin whiskey, beer, or bathtub gin

getting tight or going easy

in honkytonk or speakeasy

pain flows up from the roots.

Blues ain’t got nothin on country

and you’ll know that by and by

cause I’m gonna put me head

down on the varnished bed

of a cigar-burned bar

to the sound of a steel guitar

and just lay me down and cry.

My Storytelling Creed

I believe in fairy tales

I believe they're true

I believe in fairy tales

Do you believe them too?

I believe in wishes made

when stars fall from the sky

I believe if birds can fly

Then maybe so can I.

I believe in magic spells

If you can only make them rhyme

I believe in unicorns

And Once Upon a Time...

I believe that leprechauns

Hide gold at rainbow's end

I believe adventure lies

Just 'round the river bend.

And I believe that every day

There's magic in the air

That heaven's not beyond our hopes

Its just beyond our fears.

Chili Dog Poem

(Published in the Portsmouth Herald's "Random Acts of Poetry")

Truck stops are a terrible place to write poetry. The men who

gather there want the music up too loud;  the roar of rubber on tar

has burned a trough in their ears that needs the cooling flow of

bland rhythms and obvious rhymes. How hard it is to resist.

The waitresses at truck stops are too substantial,

too there. Tips depend on being noticed,

and noticing waitresses makes it hard to write poetry. 

They are always grabbing something, dropping something,

at every table they run past to get to empty tables in the back.

The older waitress wears a skirt and plastic hair and calls

the truckers hon. She is practiced, packaged. Half mother,

half mistress, just as they would expect. The younger one wears

jeans too tight and trades a table to wait on me, wearing a made-up

name that she hopes I will remember and forget who she really is.

The customers talk too loud on the phones conveniently provided

in every booth, of wives and to girlfriends, to kids they say they long

to see over wires they tug to global lengths. They want to talk, to me

or worse to the old geezer two tables past me, about his home state

sports teams, his daddy’s farm, and the lump he found in his groin.

There are no stories in the truck stop, no images to focus the mind,

no lessons to learn, no metaphors. There are no muses here.

There are only men in diesel-stained hats, a pregnant waitress

with no ring on her finger, and a poet eating chili dogs with a fork.