Cloud Kingdom at Dusk
On his back on a grass hill
lies a boy, who, in this dusky hour,
watches the sun paint a castle
with pastels on keep and tower:
a gentle peach upon the spire
that’s lit by a cloud dragon’s fire.
Tag: rhyme
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An Amazing Poem about Moonbeams
Moonbeams
Sometimes, the moon drops down a line
when fishing for him, or her,
who’ll climb starward that silvery vine
in search of wild adventure.
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A Country Woman and Her Daughter
A Country Woman and Her Daughter
The girl enters with a glad meow,
summer weather following like a tail.
The screen door bangs on sunset’s brow
she pounces on her mother with a purr.
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Looking through a Microscope at the Universe
Evidently, you have it backward.
The microscope is for the microscopic,
the telescope for those enraptured
by the awesome scope of the cosmic.
Clearly, you’ve made a mistake.
Yet in life’s surprising petri dish
lies a macrocosm of creation:
startling stuff that makes up bird and fish,
complex atoms which incite elation,
that look like stars in a great black lake.
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Church Bell
Church Bell
The air’s dead in the cemetery.
Unmoving, the Spanish moss drapes
like monks’ robes in a monastery
in that gliding Reaper’s shape.
Live oaks stand as still as lead.
A sound. Through glossed air comes a knell:
sliding like glaze, sticking like dread,
conducting a new soul to its stone cell.
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The Candle
The Candle
A flame leaps on a taper’s end
like a child filled with joy
or when playing with his friend –
such warm, bright light in a boy.
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Desert Revival
Desert Revival
We once were all in desert dry:
scorched by sun, parched by thirst,
we’d thought that here we’d die.
But when the night came coolly
we felt we’d weathered the worst.
Our zest it quickened duly,
as life extended, untraversed.
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Season’s Chimes
Season’s Chimes
It’s inadequate, the sounding chime,
to convey the sundry dawns and dusks
that rise and fall like crops of flowers,
and seasons that stock and sap the bowers,
and fields aging from seed to fruit to husk:
these many great and small cycles of time.
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Heartgash
This wound no hand can stanch,
neither doctor’s nor family’s.
For it, no balm in homilies,
in truths, or olive branch.
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Death in Autumn by a Waterfall
Death in Autumn by a Waterfall
In autumn’s gold-larched, cold Cascades
a river runs down a mountain—
whose slopes are hued in honeyed shades,
glazed in spray as from a fountain—
to kiss the stone of an abyss.
From water dashed against granite
a roar rises like plains thunder,
while the bay, from trees that dam it,
smells of moist earth from dense vapor,
and mist bedews sheer cliffs of shist.
And there in brumey, drizzly clag
waits the gloomy, black-robed reaper,
calm ’neath a cantilevered crag,
to bear an old careworn sleeper,
with soothing hiss, to the last bliss.
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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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New Spring
The memories of raw winter fade like youth
before the season’s budding daffodils.
We used to walk this narrow path together
from our home to the crest of the bare hill.
There we stopped to watch whitecaps and sea oats.
Just as often, we stayed home, nude in bed.
While the coffee steamed over a blue flame,
I kissed your ribs, and you let yourself be led.
The dogs lazed, and dust dappled the light beams.
Such are the warp and weft of the past’s loom,
whose fabrics are of unstylish design.
I moved houses when the hyacinths bloomed.
I left behind our old, bayonetted ghosts.
Such battle-weary and war-torn phantoms
are taxing partners for the jaunty soul
and will hold a wistful mind at ransom.
I left pining wraiths in our kitchen and field,
where, with great care, we’d raised violets and phlox.
So, when spring came, and the air’s clean perfume
was beholden to fields of wild lilacs,
my mind involuntarily recalled you.
But I’m holding hands with a new lover,
so I take the unsought reminiscence,
lay it back among ivy and clover,
and walk with her from those bygone places,
into the sunlight that warms our faces.
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Our Hope Rises – A Rondeau
Our hope rises like a strong wind,
buoying us as we ascend
from gloomy fogs we’re loathe to fly
into a clear and better sky,
one where fewer troubles attend.
From lonely walks with tragic ends
to crowded tracks among cold friends
where we’ve left our own dreams to die,
our hope rises.
Even as we misapprehend,
stumble, fail at making amends,
and live a self-evident lie,
still, if we but honor and try
to be noble before life ends
our hope rises.
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The Dancer
The dancer turns elegantly:
her pivot light and feathery,
her eyes as brilliant as a wren’s,
her lithe form swanlike as she spins
in ceremonial artistry.
The dance is life, felicity,
and also deep despondency.
Away from falls, time and again,
the dancer turns.
The nimble dancer gracefully
moves to the places she should be:
past the stages where dreams end,
to the theaters that love attends
where with airy vitality
the dancer turns.
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A Good Man
I am a good man—
That’s what my employees all must say
(Or I’ll withhold their holiday bonuses
And have them working Christmas Day).
I am a good man—
For that you can take my girlfriend’s word
(And if my wife protests the sentiment,
Then, like me, pretend you never heard).
I am a good man—
I keep my word at any cost
(And all of those who say otherwise
Are just the losers and the lost).
I am a good man—
I am assured so every day
(And thus I find it very strange
That people don’t come my way).
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Old Charts
The tea leaves are muddled; the lies are twice-told.
A lot and very little have changed.
Folk are not called slaves but still they are sold,
And some marriages can still be arranged.
Still. Still: Ignorance, as before, is poor.
It thieves, robbing both the foolish and wise.
And still, honest work makes a cherished core;
Since before the Greeks, such work has been prized.
Some metaphors remain too: Hope, the bird—
Whether caged or just a “thing with feathers”—
Has, as its strong song, the uplifting word;
Its wings fly one out of foulest weathers.
So, much is hard to parse: wild, chaotic.
But the human spirit remains so clear.
Amidst the coiling maelstrom psychotic
Are love and care: old charts by which we steer.
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An Autumn Dell
When the thick rolling mists of September
Billow out among trees with leaves of gold
To lounge at the roots of needled timber,
And the afternoon air’s gilded with cold,
Then comes the hallowed season of autumn.
In this time, frosts rime grasses on a hill
And ice a slow stream’s course in the bottom
Of an old, majestic, and mountainous dell.
A scarlet cardinal trills in the still air
Deep within the mixed broadleaf and pine woods,
And an old croaking crow with feathers bare
Checks the soggy stump where she hoards her goods.
Shafts of dusty light pierce the canopy
To a moist forest floor littered with leaves;
This light reflects off the cobwebs’ dew
That beads the webs that ornament the trees.
It is damp, crisp, breezy. Mushrooms abound.
Trees rot and furnish homes for worms and ants.
At dawn, the wet woodland wakes with dim sound,
And fogs seem as mournful as remembrance.
If the mist is a kind of deathly shroud,
Then drops of raw rain are like clear jewels,
Falling like crystals from high, icy clouds
To make the earth miry and fill the clear pools.
The rain and mists, the careful husbandry,
The bees’ stores of honeyed provender
Are set against the coming scarcity.
All’s precious in fall, for an end is near.
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Near numerous and luminous as stars,
And a sign of things healthy and morbid
(Depending on the case and cultivar),
Is the almost ubiquitous orchid.
A flower of finely perfumed fragrance,
It is stylish in every quick season:
To be found in buttonholes in romance
And, in mourning, adorning the coffin.
Not even the well-known, august rose
Can boast such flexibility and scope
Compared with the manifold forms of those
Orchids that stand both for grief and for hope.
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Born in a cosmic, ancient time unknown—
Neither with a beginning nor with end,
Roving the globe with no destination,
Scaled from gales to zephyrs—exists the wind.
Never truly stilled. Wind wafts through tall grass,
Strokes a woodpecker’s pileated back,
Eddies, whirls like an Istanbul dervish,
Then rushes to autumn’s gold tamarack.
Along a purling stream it courses.
Unconquerable, the wind keeps her head,
Dashing over the solemn pine forest,
Toward the boreal Arctic’s stone swept shore.
Then out! Out over the cold raging sea,
Of black waves, fractured pack ice, and white spume—
Out amid lightning’s ribbonlike white wires,
Where auroras blaze in electric bloom.
On capricious currents come chance and change.
Historic, progressive, shaping wild rain—
On wind ride voyagers, eagles, and hopes:
Hopes to be fulfilled, hopes that are in vain.
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Winter Portrait
On oak branches hang frosted leaves–
Brittle, icy, and walnut brown–
Among stones, wolves, owls, swans, and geese,
Where flakes of snow fall thickly down.
Fragrant pines and gnarled cedars stand
In a gorge by the frozen stream
Where fog lies in a milky band,
And the sun makes the clear ice gleam.
Through this cold, all solitary,
Walks a man most melancholy.
All he owns is all he carries:
His bread, water, hopes, and follies.
He recalls a girl from his past.
He dreads the long, poor road ahead
For darkness here is most unkind.
He has no place to lay his head.
He treks across the snowy plains
Past the scrub oak, the pines, and streams,
His mind is hard, his body pained.
His clothing is worn at the seams.
The moon rises, new and dark.
Stars are woven like fishing nets.
The land lies daunting, grim, and stark.
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He’s got nowhere to go
Nothing to live for
Nothing left to show
Nothing in his core
He walks like a ghost
Silent, unseen
Like something from the past
That might never have been.
Now the wind in the alley
Blows paper in the gutter
There’s shadows in the valley
And a dark rumbling mutter.
It’s another cold night
In this evil broken place
With unlit street lights
Over every haggard face.
Now here comes dawn
The dangerous night ends again
We start it with a yawn
Then hurl ourselves in.
And there goes the man
Who somehow lost his way
He’s changed and made a plan.
Each dawn is a new day.
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The Arrival of Autumn
The Arrival of Autumn is a nature poem with rhymes at the end of every other line. It was written in Washington state on September 7th, 2018.
At the end of summer when the honey drips from the comb,
when the tall grasses wave in the warm gentle breeze,
and the orchards that lie north of the farmsteader’s home
are rich with apples that hang heavy from the trees,
then the shadows begin to lengthen in the southern sun
which sets over a heartland of fields and rolling hills.
And folk feel in their bones that autumn has begun,
a time of black and scarlet leaves, brisker winds, and chills.
It is a time of fog. A time of mists among dells and valleys,
when gourds and pumpkins ripen among the pastures,
and streams flow swift, cold, and clear along the rocky alleys.
Then comes the time for hot tea, woolgathering, and a peaceful book.
Then comes the time when the black cat, its eyes like gold sparked jewels,
leaps from the wooden fencepost, and, with penetrating look,
pads across the tufted grass, past the penned up cows and mules,
on to some destination, secret or lazy or otherwise.
The days grow shorter and dimmer,
until the heavens are lit by starry orbs and the lush moonrise,
and all the earth is silvered by their fair shimmer.
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Terry the Brontosaurus
Terry the brontosaurus saves the life of a triceratops at a great personal cost.
Terry was a brontosaurus
With dry and pebbly skin
He ate from trees within the forest
And wore a very merry grin
One day a terrible tyrannosaur
Sighted a slow triceratops
And Terry cried, Watch out my friend!
As the T-rex licked its chops
So the triceratops it ran away
And the t-rex missed his brunch
The tyrannosaur felt angry then
And looked at Terry as his lunch!
Terry gave the tyrannosaur
His very best winning smile
And then he turned his tail to him
And sprinted for a mile!
The carnivore bared his sharp teeth
And started in pursuit
And through forests broad and rivers deep
Terry could not shake the brute
Then at last the worst did happen
As the t-rex caught his prey
On a grassy sunlit little field
In the middle of the day
The tyrannosaur held his claw
To the unfortunate victim’s throat
And said, My dear you’re at an end
For this is all she wrote!
But Terry was a kind creature
And he had a warm and cheerful air
That even the tyrannosaurus paused
Before making the final tear.
Terry gave a big old smile
And the tyrannosaur gave a sigh
Then the brontosaurus stood on his feet
As the tyrannosaur stood by
Then it was that Terry was heard
To address the t-rex and ask,
Don’t you think you’d prefer some leaves
Or some very tasty grass?
The t-rex said, I’ll try with you
Perhaps those leaves are fine
And Terry pulled down a clump of green
That was hanging from a vine
The t-rex tried to eat the greens
But his face blackened with dismay
Why this is the worst food, he said,
I’ve eaten in all my days!
Then the tyrannosaur changed his mind
And he pounced on the dinosaur
He ripped Terry from his tail to his heart
In the way of a true carnivore
So it was that the t-rex dined
On the brontosaurus’ frame
With the smacking sounds and cracking sounds
That were befitting of his name
And as the tyrannosaur licked its sharp teeth
Full of blood and raw proteins
He felt that a good brontosaur
Was certainly much more appetizing than his greens.
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Whiskey in the Jar
You can sing a song any way you want. And you can make whatever kind of music you want. The song Whiskey in the Jar is an old Irish folk tune, and I’ve always thought it was too short. I always wanted more of it. So, I wrote a few verses of my own.
As I was crossin over the snow-capp’d Rocky Mountains
I spied an icy stream a rushin like a fountain
and sittin at a fire was wicked Captain Farrell
he was a’clad in bear furs, and sportin rich apparel.
Now Farrel’s name was known well, from Denver to the waters,
and evil deeds went with it, as blood goes with a slaughter;
there was no act of mercy he’d extend or would belabor,
but he cut off happy days with the sharp edge of his saber.
musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
I stepped up out the shadows with my pistol cocked and loaded,
said, “Give me all your money! And yer leathers n yer coat, man!”
He took off all his clothing, and I left him nearly naked
without his hat or wallet, and I marooned him all unaided.
Captain Ferrell swore he’d kill me, no matter what befell him
I told ’im, “I ain’ bound for heaven, so I’ll see you down in Hell man!”
The coins they were a jinglin and a clinkin, as I headed home to Jenny
they were a sight so rare; they were so golden and so many.
musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
I come down off the mountain and entered to our chambers
Where Jenny looked so invitin that I had to go and claim her;
I showed her all the money, and she said she was my darlin,
that we’d dance through all the nights and go drinkin bright n early!
She started buyin dresses of silks and tasteful satins;
I left my gold in taverns and I soon began to fatten,
I gave my friends all of my money without ever thinkin twice,
and left my pockets lighter in wild games of cards and dice.
musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
And then it was it happened, that I was sleeping sober,
When Farrell tapped at midnight, and he beckoned Jenny over.
She stole away from bed then, a blanket wrapped around her,
And Farrell did with touch and silver tongue confound her.
So my unfaithful Jenny crept back into the chamber
and, taking up my pistols, she hid them with the liquor.
The two-faced scarlet vixen hid my saber in the dresser
before turnin to the captain to let his hands caress her.
musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
When I woke in mornin, the captain’s men were all around me;
I had no gun nor blade and for that they did well ground me.
They took me to the mountains and stripped me nearly naked
and left me on a peak, boys, marooned and all unaided.
So now I do my walkin with feet well cold and frozen
never lookin back, boys, on the path that I have chosen
though I have thoughts a plenty to keep my merry mind full,
for Jenny took my money and that bastard Captain Farrell!
musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
Oh I’d like to find my brother, he’s the one who’s in the navy,
I don’t know where they’ve shipped him, someplace surely warm and wavy,
Together we’ll go swimming on the beaches of Hawai’i,
Oh I know he’ll treat me better than my darlin sportin Jenny!
Some delight in fishin, and some delight in hiking,
Some take delight in warring like a Viking,
But I take delight in the juice of the barley
and courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early!
Musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar
Musha riggum durram dah
whack fol the daddy o
whack fol the daddy o
there’s whiskey in the jar!
Luke Kelly’s and The Dubliners “Whiskey in the Jar”
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The Hopeful and the Damned
We are some of us moths flying into flame,
Burned and burning yet unable to give a damn,
Propelled by a force we cannot name
To escape, to wander this wondrous land.
We set off, in uneven times, with a strangled cry,
despite a prudent fear of the unknown,
There is sure loss of life for those that will not try
To flee the far, far greater peril of the known.
There’s risk in staying still: yawning to death,
Softening, or miserable suffocation.
Such hope for new life and free breath,
Brings us, panting, to the platform of a station.
And God knows we miss some things left behind:
The work unfinished, the plans unstarted,
Sentimental things, a cherished friend so kind,
The people and the animals, the heavenly departed.
But life is short. It is astoundingly, unflinchingly short.
It is but a blink in the universe, here and then gone,
It flashes by so quickly there is little time to sort
The nursery from the hospice, the sunset from the dawn.
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From Where the Luminous Arise
“From Where the Luminous Arise” is a poem that talks of how underdogs and people at a disadvantage rise to success and triumph.
And when the streets are soft with confetti,
And cheers run riot through the air,
Remember, remember the place
from where the truly luminous arise.
Not from beneath the glittering chandeliers,
Nor emerging from jade-tiled pools,
Nor rocked in rubied cradles,
Nor rising from feathered beds,
Do grim, hard heros emerge.
Those places boast no forge hot enough
To maintain the internal flame.
They cannot compress folk from blackened, dusty coal
Into coruscating jewels.
Nor are they like the urban abattoirs,
That butcher the strong and the weak,
And leave the lucky to survive.
It is the men who, in burning their bridges,
See better through the night.
It is the women who, in casting off their anchors,
Sail to uncharted shores.
It is the people—broken, bent, and mangled—
Whose pain and suffering and want
Drive them relentlessly
onwards, upwards, onwards, upwards,
Until they reach the stars.
It is the weary, the scarred, the undaunted survivor
Who succeeds—against the common prediction—
Despite the overwhelming odds,
In the face of discrimination,
Pushing back the strong hands of hate.
And when these men and women answer
Their calls to greatness and commence
To building structures that will endure—
The band will stand and the gigues will play,
Trumpets forever after:
A marching tune in days of June
And the blues in the winter bleak.
And when these men and women become
Luminaries like those before,
In the times of cold when
All the coats in Sweden
can’t warm a man,
They burn.
And in times of fear when
All the prayers to heaven
Can’t conjure manna,
They give of themselves,
Until there is nothing left to give,
But bone and heart and blood.
And when they have given all of themselves
To field and friend and foe
Then they die like all men will
And are buried down below.
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The walls are lined with bougainvillea,
And the streets are paved with cobblestone.
Ahead the Basílica de la Sagrada Família
Rises from the earth of Catalonia.
The day is breezeless, dry as bone,
While parakeets wing from tree to tree.
A suckling babe makes her mother moan
As she nurses on the malecón.
Up on the wharf, along the deep blue sea
Come fishermen with their morning catch:
Skipjack tunas, mahi-mahi—
Scales iridescent, fine as filigree.
What cold heart could Barri Gòtic not snatch—
What wounded heart could it not patch—
When lovers go to seek their match?
What locked imagination could it not unlatch?
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Mr. McGraff the Happy Giraffe
Mr. McGraff the happy giraffe encounters four vicious crocodiles, and he takes action.
There once was a happy giraffe
Whose name was Mr. McGraff
He was brown and yellow
And a very tall fellow
And he had the most wonderful laugh.
Now Mr. McGraff the lovely giraffe
Went down to the mud hole one day
And it was there that he saw in four crocodile’s jaws
The child of a hippo named May.
Now Mr. McGraff was a quiet giraffe,
As it is in a giraffe’s nature to be,
But seeing this calf almost halfway in half
His cries rang from mountain to sea.
Although unable to swim, he charged right on in
And he attacked the grim crocodiles.
After much splishing and splashing
And fighting and thrashing
The giraffe emerged with a smile.
He shouted, You cool crocodiles
With your treacherous smiles
On this sunny day you’ve been beaten!
And my next endeavor
Will be to turn you to leather
For having my hippo friends eaten!
In the course of a while
After much musing on style
The giraffe was seen with a grin.
He took the lousy old brutes
And turned them into four boots
And those crocs were not heard from again.
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A Wildebeest Named Gnu
Wildebeests, or gnus, are the deerlike animals in the background of the photo below. As you can see, they love to eat. They are types of antelopes, and they are frequently seen on the Mara (a protected area of grasslands) in southern Kenya.
This poem is about a very lazy wildebeest whose name is Gnu.
There once was a wildebeest named Gnu
The laziest beast that the veldt ever knew
One day a lion poked him and said,
Now either you run or you’re dead
But Gnu couldn’t be bothered to move.
Then the lion scratched the young gnu,
Said, From you I’ll make a gnu stew!
For I have claws that can shred
And I can bite off your head!
But Gnu couldn’t be bothered to move.
Then the lion jumped on Gnu’s back
Saying, I’m going to attack!
You’d better start running my friend!
Now I’ll give you some steps out in front
’Fore I start the hunt,
Then we’ll see what takes place in the end!
But Gnu couldn’t be bothered to move.
So the lion shook his head
He walked away and he said,
Such a riddle the world never knew:
For though the gnu just seems lazy
To be so idle is crazy
He must be some kind of statue!
And Gnu would have smiled
For he thought it worthwhile
But he couldn’t be bothered to move.
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The River to a Trout
This poem presents a trout’s description of home: the river.
The rhyme scheme is abab.
What a fine and watery home you are!
With currents rippling, cold and clear!
With a sunken gravelly sandbar
To which eggs will easily adhere.
And what a clean, quick sound you make!
As your water burbles over stones—
Aqua drawn from a cold lake,
Where the water’s as silent as bleached bones.
River, you branch and fork and cleft
Beneath the willows and the oak
And entwine with mists of gossamer heft
That mantle your surface with smoke.
