Poem: Solid Granite

Solid Granite

My life is like the solid

Granite countertop in my kitchen—

Stable, yet mottled in colors

Gray, white, blue, gold, white—

Seemingly immobile yet in constant

Colorful motion contained

In one continuous immobile slab

That is me. How miraculously

Complex and emotionally varied,

Swirling in aloof coolness

Where others make the food

Of their lives, seldom noticing

How I am in varied hues

O turmoil, used for the substance

Of their existence. And so

It is with all of us

In a joyously cool granite stability.

September 2024

About This Poem

My kitchen countertop inspired this poem, a poem about anyone, really. We all present something different than what we feel inside, yet those feelings present something that, hopefully, is beautiful. I certainly don't feel all that solid all of the time, yet I am well aware that others might view me as such. The photo is my new kitchen counter just after installation several years ago.

 

Poem: Incessant Laboring

 

Incessant Laboring

I know that if all men stopped

Their labors throughout the world

The air would clear of its grimy haze

And the canals of Venice would flow

Clear as the waters of Homosassa Springs.

The birds would all return to their

Migratory patterns and Earth

Would again breathe freely

Unlike the chronic chain smoker

We have turned it into.

The heat of summers would return

To their cooler climes and the glaciers

Would stop their retreating

Into the alpine lakes

Freezing viruses like a delicacy

Preserved for that special holiday

When men could not cease their 

Incessant laboring.

September 2024

About This Poem

The COVID pandemic is what inspired this poem, though what brought it to mind so long after it was over now escapes me. I still think about how quiet it was, no traffic, the water cleaned itself up. Seems like we could do with that more often. In the end of the poem, I personify earth as someone who freezes things for later which seemed appropriate considering how pandemics can erupt. The picture is the Cascade mountains on a clear day near Snoqualmie pass.

Poem: From You I Will Take Comfort

From You I Will Take Comfort

From you I will take comfort

When things are not going well

And others seem to jeer at me

For whatever reason that they want,

Never understanding who I am.

From you I will take comfort

In the sweetness of your love,

The desire to please just me

With whatever thing that you want,

Fully understanding who I am.

August 2024

About This Poem

This poem is about friendship and for me, this is about my wife. As far as explanation, I don't think it needs anymore. The photo is roses in our yard, a bush that I transplanted from my late mother-in-law's home when she moved into assistive living. It has flourished here in Potlatch after the long uprooting from Toppenish, Washington. It has also split into two when I transplanted it again after building our garage. I see my wife in these roses.

 

Poem: A Poet and a Poem

A Poet and a Poem

Music mingles in my mind

with withering thoughts waiting 

to be brushed by with brilliance

of the pounding percussion.

Thus, those thoughts think themselves

into an oblivion on 

orchestrated pen strokes playing

perjury on paper: pliant

paper, the recipient

required to relegate

ink blots blundering forth

from frolicking fools such

as myself aspiring to be

pompous preening poets, perhaps.

Perhaps not.

January 1995

About This Poem

This one is definitely from the vault. It's about poetic aspirations and whether or not I am worthy of being read by others. I can't answer that, yet I persist in writing them and making my stab at publishing them both here and in the more traditional sense of books. Sometimes that happens... The photo is a selfie of me just messing with effects on my phone.