Archive for September, 2009
September 30, 2009 at 2:00 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
written Sept. 30, 1999
Nocturne
“A holiday, a holiday, the first one of the year”
– Matty Groves, by Richard Thompson
You
should see
the Northern Lights
the best I ever saw.
I
was too tired
to get up and look,
only see them thru
your eyes
(they were swirly liquid vases.)
When coughing wakes me
I go downstairs,
out the back door,
see high clouds
and a waning moon
rise in the east
over blinking red radio towers,
write down words
to a Dylan song
(rainy days on the Great Lakes
walkin’ the hills of old Duluth)
and go back to bed.
I
hope the bird
clock didn’t wake you –
black-capped chickadee
2 a.m. –
your birthday!
It’s hard to lie still
when I’m anxious
to start the trip,
to travel again
with you
with you
to travel again with you!
9-30-99
Simple Pleasures
Kitchen table.
Izzy with book.
Sal reaching for oatmeal.
Butter, brown sugar, raisins and milk.
You on a run.
9-30-99
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September 29, 2009 at 10:38 pm
· Filed under fall, flight, flying, human heart, poem, poetry, sea, short poem, skydiving, summer, sun, tattoo, tattoos ·Tagged poem, poetry
To Sexton, a triumphant soar and plunge.
To Williams, a splash quite unnoticed.
And Daedalus? How did it feel
when his son flew into the sun?
Did his heart melt like bees wax?
Did he watch each feather fall,
or turn and fly away?
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September 29, 2009 at 10:50 am
· Filed under fall, poem, poetry, rain, short poem, summer ·Tagged poem, poetry
After a hot September, rain,
relentless and wind-whipped,
scoured the summer-scuffed
surfaces of this postglacial
northwoods world, settled
the dust and wetted the sand,
made lie down gentle the ferns
brown and brittle with fall,
and glistened on sumac and
maples red raging against
the dying of the light. Now
the chill I feel is not from wet
and cold, but from the year’s
descent, with the flagging sun,
into a quiet, snow-muffled time
come soon when men too
lie quiet and wait for one
who is not there, and one
more summer should there be.
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September 27, 2009 at 11:09 pm
· Filed under cats, flying, night, poem, poetry, song, songbird ·Tagged birds, budgies, cat, crow, poem, poetry, song
blue budgies two
lovely singers you
both bright eyed
your window wide
neither cat crow
wind nor snow
do sylvan dreams
on feathered wings
yet take flight
this velvet night?
in my cage
my wingless age
bound by weight
a lifetime’s freight
hand cinched ties
deep set eyes
confined by fears
a million years
my sentence long
no morning song
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September 25, 2009 at 5:52 pm
· Filed under coyote, human heart, love, lovers, moon, night, poem, poetry, sea, universe
Like discovering water on the surface of the moon —
sometimes love finds you in the beautiful desolation
of a dark and empty heart. No river, no lake-
filled crater, no rain to streak the lunar sky, just
a meager film of dew laid down in endless night,
but gather up the spread-thin droplets on the freeze-
dried ancient sea — oh lonely sky-flung traveler —
wet your long-parched lips, slake your love-
foresaken thirst, and drink in, too, the light-
pulsed words that shine across space and time
like the bright and smiling face of the full moon
that casts its glow upon the hills and lakes,
coyotes and junkyard dogs, soldiers and sailors
and ships at sea, and lovers strolling hand in hand
on the tide-turned shores of a far-off watery world.
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September 20, 2009 at 9:30 pm
· Filed under love, lovers, moon, night, poem, poetry, stars
Away you glide across the surface
of this Northwoods lake at sundown,
your paddle strokes strong and sure
and natural as breathing;
the water,
pink and blue reflection of the sky,
closing seamlessly behind your kayak,
leaving no trace of your passing through
this warm and windless September day
fading to night.
This is what leaving
would look like; this it how it feels
to be left on shore.
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September 16, 2009 at 1:59 pm
· Filed under dolphin, love, poem, poetry, sea, swim
They say the language of dolphins
obeys the Law of Brevity,
but no one knows if a side flip
signifies a desire or an order.
For me it would not matter,
your wish being my command.
Your clicks and whistles still resonate
to the tip of my dorsal fin,
and so I swim beside you,
rolling in unison without words,
following your every gesture
like a shadow along the sandy bottom
of our shallow sunny sea.
There is no other way
for I have no legs to walk
upon that strange forbidden grade
that rises from the world we know
unto the mysterious dry seascape
where the current of my life
could never flow. Into
water we are born, salty
as blood and tears,
and in the sea we live
and love and leave too soon,
obeying the Law of Brevity.
You beckon me deeper
as you know I long to follow
the gulls who swim the sky
with their wondrous fins outstretched
and call me with their piercing cries
from the unknowable place beyond.
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September 15, 2009 at 10:18 am
· Filed under poem, poetry
The sun burned through the morning haze
like a sightless red eye in a forehead of sky.
At the water cooler, I was blown off by that windbag
from I.T., James. Joyce from Accounting
bewitched me with her smile in line for the copier.
On my way to the basement break room, I thought
I heard my mother’s voice. Home at last,
I am greeted by my faithful dog, Clover.
I sure hope dinner will be quiet and uneventful.
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September 14, 2009 at 11:05 pm
· Filed under poem, poetry, prose poem, short poem, tattoo, tattoos
Tattoed with the markings of their tribe,
tan boys in baggy shorts and sunbleached
girls in faded bikinis sip 7-11 coffee
on the Belmar boardwalk, while
black-suited surfers bob like seals and
the grey-green sea folds and unfolds,
folds and unfolds, and spills ashore
in the lulling rhythm of the slow
slack morning, until one tall figure
rises from the foam, a miraculous dancer
gliding god-like across the monochromatic
horizon of the worn-out ebbing season.
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September 13, 2009 at 4:36 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
I wrote this last week in response to a call for poems with various perspectives on 9-11 from Voxpoetica.com editor Annmarie Lockhart.
Threnody for the Survivors of September 11, 2001
By Ray Sharp
(written September 2009)
The angel of death flew on silver wings.
Strange solitary birds clad in dark feathers
Tumbled through the bright blue sky.
A blizzard of confetti–scraps of lives
Torn asunder–swirled on air currents stirred
By three thousand souls, or by their absence.
Tall towers slumped and crashed earthward,
Their steel bones and skin of glass melted and
Crushed by the inevitability of gravity that pulls
Us to the grave. Now, eight years hence,
The rescuers who breathed the fine particles
Of pulvered lives are falling to the same rare cancer
I came to know when it took my father two years ago.
Were the silent seeds of sickness already
Planted in him so far away on that fateful day?
I scattered my father’s ashes on a desert hilltop
To which I may never return. In wind and rain
And blazing heat they will join with the soil
That gives life anew. In living there comes pain
And grief, but in death may we find comfort.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
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