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Tag: sight

Smoke and Mirror: poulter’s measure

Published on April 12, 2017

The world of late is full of crashing sound and blurry vision,
a thunder crash inside a cloud – lost in indecision.

Some claim that sunshine lurks around the corner, only waiting
for those who dare beyond the haze, past the senseless hating

of those who in the darkness loudly curse the coming daylight
that strips away the fog’s disguise; the night conceals their blight.

To be afraid just draws the darkness inward, more and nearer;
thus hate intensifies and grows – in that distorted mirror

your sense of what should be and how things are is set askew.
You must resist the ease of it. It seems, but isn’t, you.

Some say the world is what you wish to make it: good or bad,
a nightmare or fantastic dream; if so, then why so sad?

Step out into the light and choose a path beyond the din.
Who knows what you will find out there? A new way to begin?

12 APR 2017

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Memory: a poem of the five senses

Published on April 17, 2014

Burnt cinnamon and candle wax,
the surface of sandpaper and a tack,
a bitter hint of lemon peel
chased with a water back.

The tinkle of a shattered glass,
the supple strength of silk,
an echo of a footstep
and a hint of soured milk.

A new bouquet of flowers,
the barking of a hound,
cold shimmer of a moonbeam,
the scent of fresh-plowed ground.

17 APR 2014

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Out Back: an observation

Published on April 7, 2014

The short grass under the spreading live oak
is mostly dead – a dappled green
stretch of dirt that seems to soak up
the shadows cast from the tree limbs
just starting to burst with new growth
this spring.

In this shade, gray squirrels and red-winged blackbirds,
bluejays and golden finches, too,
flit quickly to and fro between the feeders:
high on the black electric lines
one minute, then down into
the still dewy morning lawn the next,
grasping a brown seed or two in their black shiny
beaks, as their partners
and lovers
and children
sing merrily out from above,
“Come here, come quick! There’s food!”

06 APR 2014

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Galileo

Published on April 5, 2005

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, what we call firmament
is just a shifting lens that’s bent
to suit the seasons. To approve
or disapprove such things is vain
and futile; our whole history,
that we would carve in stone and brick,
is but a wisp, a palimpsest,
that the next epoch writes anew.

And gods, if such are said to be,
perhaps employ more lasting inks
yet too will fade to faint indents
and leave no greater marks than men.

What once was center is now freed
and to circumference lays the lie;
great spheres of thought that wise men hold
more dear than life itself, deflate.

So what of fate, no more ordained
and best left to the seer’s glass?
What purpose do those notions serve
that would enslave the yearning mind?

We are in motion without end;
there is no point at which, full-stop,
the world could even for an hour
reflect upon its then-new state
so that an unseen force could smile
and praise his finished handiwork.

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, we hurl through space and time
in some eternal dance of life;
and no stiff doctrine made of men
has power to change the truth of it,
nor outraged, claim as heresy
what they, while blind, deny my eye.

05 APR 2005

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