Tag: Ekphrastic

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Poems

A Nighttime Stroll

While I marvel at the starred, phantom sky—
where silver clouds scud and the pale moon beams
in an epic ether, tinted ink blue—
a weary, worthy town slumbers and dreams
of fortune, of flight, or falling through space.
Where the air smells of pine sap and wood smoke,
fireflies blink, the dirt path leads into trees,
and pondside bullfrogs call mates with hoarse croaks.
When descending the hill through low grasses—
that run to the foot of a hemlock stand,
whose spectral shadows hide the wispy way—
there come a turn and vista of the land.
There lie the distant village and spired church,
the quiet houses, and earthy, quaint lanes
surrounded by arable wheat pastures:
rolling hills topped with rippling grains.
While on a solitary nighttime stroll
through rustling grass and the brisk, biting breeze,
in view of an old, wild, gleaming river,
there comes a worn, welcome feeling of ease.

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Poems

Downtown at Dusk

In April when the crepe myrtles and cherry trees bloom,
city folk are reflected in the rain’s puddles,
by water that serves as mirrors for impressions. 
Wind whips billowy clouds into an eastern gloom,
while on the shiny street, a wayfarer huddles
beneath the tall windows of lordly professions.
The sun leaves plum-shaded shadows beyond buildings
and beams wash walls in apricot and tangerine.
In this fine twilight, a black cat’s lime-gold eyes glint;
hazy rays catch rich institutions’ burnished gilding.
Night falls on folk fat and merry, lonely and lean.
The cat leaps.  Windows glow with a lemony tint.
In the darkness, people’s reflections disappear;
edifices are shades of coal and emery.
By night, people’s luminous private lives appear,
while day’s brilliant impressions fade to memory.

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Poems

Ravens

Orange pumpkins and golden grains ripen
Beneath a horde of black ravens who circle fields
Where a straw scarecrow stands with his pipe in
To frighten the birds from their meals.

The sky is not yet blue; it is rosy this dawn.
A tendril of mist twines around the fruitful hollow:
It is a delicate white wreath, soon gone,
That laces the amber-leafed larches and purling river below.

The air is thin and clear–
A person could see here for miles,
And sound carries to a listening ear:
The rasp of ravens, the sacred, silent whiles.

Day comes; the mist creeps into low, dank holes,
Then vanishes as the sun paints the rose sky blue,
Leaving the moon in the east like a glowing coal
And coloring night’s purples with daylight’s vivid hues.

Flying like a rushing cataract over the still hills,
The ravens light in a dead and leafless oak,
To preen their glossy feathers with their matte bills
And caw and croak and cackle and laugh as if at a marvelous joke.