The Harvest

Fiona Robyn has posted another one of my poems on her blog A Handful of Stones.

Robyn says that "a small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention."

sitting in the ginkgo room
barefoot
surrounded by books
harvesting words

Missed Connection

Lost hearts try to contact me elsewhere
As I loiter sanguinely –
That is to say cheerfully,
Confidently; optimistically –
At the séance where the medium's
Cat slumps in a window cleaning
Her fur in the reflections
Of the flaming sky.

This poem was a response to prompt #83 at Read Write Poem. That was fun. I'll certainly do it again.

Times Square, 1973

This poem was written to be submitted to a poetry contest (see below) but I missed the deadline by a day. Oh, well, I don't think this is exactly what they were looking for.

Bright Lights Big Verse: Poems of Times Square sponsored by the The Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Alliance to help celebrate Times Square, and the qualities that Times Square represents —- diversity, desire, dynamism and the marriage of commerce and culture —-through poetry.

A smell barely remembered reminds her
of the day when the two of them met
and went to a Times Square hotel. She
should have known better than to skip
lunch and pick him up. He sometimes
complained when she did. But the fashion
has changed, she said. In the room,
she imagined rather than felt
the breeze from an open window
that he gazed out, humming quietly.
She asked him to come nearer and like
a long fall slowed she reached out
and touched him and it stood up and
went hard into the pink and together
they moved rhythmically. They could not
stay with it long but he could move
as she moved and then he shivered slightly
and with delight shuddered. They turned
aside and she stared at the lights beyond
as if awakened on the other side.

In the Trees

i was all alone and waved and yelled "away"
in the trees because of them
if one of us -- in print, in person --
gets to where the light fades
it's all over
for your familiar surroundings

The Stars

and there beside me
he would stand and say
she had never asked
why bother to leave
too obscure, the stars,
he explained

With Sails

with sails on rough seas
towards themselves rather than
away from one another

and nobody would even have to know
what he sees peering perplexedly away
i said bitterly to him alone

to be found that way...
to be anything other...
to think that when...