Hush

I've grown quite fond of this rhyming pattern (ABABAAB). It has appeared in a handful of my poems, including the one just prior to this. I think it manages to merge the rolling feel of alternate-line rhyme with the slow and steady damper of a repeated rhyme, much like one might find at the end of a Shakespearean sonnet, and I'm quickly making it my own. Interestingly enough, I can find little or no evidence that it has ever been a popular pattern. This can mean (in order of desirability) one of three things: 1. I am pioneering a new and unique poetic form; 2. I am a poor internet researcher; or 3. this form has been 'discovered' countless times, but subsequently cast aside by real poets for its simplicity and failings. I'm currently being optimistic, and aiming for #2.


Hush

A wind arose an early day
and, trembling, she spoke
a word, as soft as ocean spray
against the weathered oak
that scans the sculling terns at play
and stands, a sentry for the bay,
before the earth awoke.

It was a whisper, passing hint
of hours yet to come,
when light was barely but a glint
of color climbing from
the secret spark, spun off the flint
of distant mountains, scarce a tint
and purple as a plum.

And down it drifted through the green
and dewy undergrowth.
It chilled the the air, although unseen,
and made the small ones loath
to rise and greet the quiet queen
who slipped a ghostly breath between
the sky and soil, both.

So fresh and heady from the first,
my timely morning kiss,
as finches bared their breasts to burst
into a warbled bliss
and dusky dreams, at last, dispersed
before a daybreak, unrehearsed
but never yet amiss.

Then, on and on and to the strand
it wound a fluent track,
past flowers in the hinterland,
unbuttoned but a crack,
and forests, somnolently grand,
until it rested on the sand
and let its bellows slack.

And, finally, expressed in full
and fastened with a flush
of rosy luster, as it stole
across the lands in rush
and ramble toward a distant goal,
her lonely word was rendered whole
and happy in a hush.

Storm-Life

Why is Oregon devoid of thunderstorms? Oh, how I wish for a tumultuous, end-of-the-world tempest...


Storm-Life

A reckless breeze, infrequent burst,
as fickle as my mind,
dramatically unrehearsed,
though never unrefined,
foretokens - but a paltry first
and furtive warning for the cursed -
the onset, close behind,

as roaring wind, ungodly wrath,
arises on the sward
and surges down the staggered path
abreast a howling horde,
though all too quick to cut a swathe
and drench the fields in a bath
and burst, unduly poured,

till restive breath, bare residue,
now carrying the train,
is left alone, of all the slew,
a remnant of the rain,
to make of it a morning dew
and nerve the worsted world to
receive a storm again.

The Coming Chill

Although the temperature is quite balmy for mid-winter, those few December weeks of intense cold gave a taste of things to come. Hopefully, we will not experience a resurgence of the powerful winds and icy snows of yesteryear that crippled the city for a week or more. Still, I look forward to at least some substantial snow before Winter comes to a close. On a separate, technical note, I maintained the same pattern of sounds in the three primary verses of this poem - 'th' in the 1st and 3rd lines, and 'm' in the 2nd and 4th. I really don't know if it adds anything, but it was a fun experiment.


The Coming Chill

A polar raw lays mantled on the earth,
a heavy fetter fallen on the bloom,
and I am found confounded in my mirth
and firmly muzzled. What a bitter tomb

of hard and heavy dusk, foreboding death,
as if a resurrection cannot come,
and rearing, mouth agape with withered breath,
in wait of mortal marrow taken from

the fallow bed of fading undergrowth,
where little flecks of life are stricken lame
at last, for now the winter keeps its oath
to fell each leaping stem, as if a flame

that casts a feeble glow of candlelight
were then extinguished, ere the day be night.

Winter Tale

May the snow be thick enough to lead you out, but not so thick as to keep you in.
Merry Christmas, dear friends.


Winter Tale

When earth and sky and sweeping air -
a patient buffer, made the fair
and faithful channel of the squall
that spins between the pair -

are each, alike, in ashen-white
pelisse enveloped, ever tight,
and wholly covered by the fall
of flurries, feather-light,

and when the rushing waters still
and stiffen to the icy will,
as sets the rapids at a crawl
and calcifies the chill

that permeates the very bone
beneath the soil and the stone,
that holds the shifting surges thrall
and seals all alone,

and when each ghostly living thing
is hid away in wait of Spring
and bled until an ashen pall
recalls the bitter sting,

to lay in state, as old remains,
when life no longer runs the veins
and great has given way to small
to save the Summer gains,

then, even as the rushing snow
and crushing ice, alive in floe,
and fallen life in fleeting stall
impel the lasting low,

a resurrection will await,
if, first, a birthing bed - ornate
austerity - can send a call
as grandiose and great

as ever touched the ears of men
or granted hope of life, again,
in whispers lifted up to all
that He is born. Amen!

Leaving and Returning

All things come about with time and faith. And 'again', which ends the second line of the third verse, is meant to be pronounced according to the British 'əˈɡeɪn', not the Americanized 'əˈgɛn', so don't do it, please. Oh, and have a wonderful Christmas break.


Leaving and Returning

The sun is not as fast a friend as I;
his rosy brow can barely make a crown
as waking hours hurry briskly by
and bear the days, devoid of renown;

but even fleeting days - this pauper spread -
reduce the spanning sums that separate
a leaving and returning, nearly wed,
but not so nearly that I wish the wait,

for as the secret seeds repose beneath
the rime and long to feel light again,
or as an awful famine grips the teeth
and heightens urgent appetite to pain,

so time can never turn another week
as quickly as my yearning soul would seek.

Rise and Fall

When the weather is this cold, and we're held indoors by a chill wind as impassable as any lock, it seems only fair to dream of the world without. This poem is in memoriam of the majestic Oregon mountains - in fact, all the majestic Oregon landscape - that I shall not meet again, until a balmier climate returns.


Rise and Fall

The earth is endless in expanse;
a land as sprawling as the Eastern sky;
it leaps and rises in advance,
unharnessed as a haring horse, awry,
to pick a pattern out in prance,
a wild whirl of a dance
that none can follow, even as they try.

A windswept pirouette to raise
the valleys up and extrovert their might,
to blunt the mountains, once ablaze
and burnished by the early morning light,
until they rest a lower gaze
of pygmy hills upon the haze
that holds the furrows of their former height.

This weathering wears out the years
that flit along, as leaves upon the air,
unnumbered by the veiled gears,
those slowly spinning rigs of disrepair
that carry change in old careers
of time and tide and other fears
and lay the massifs lower than a prayer.

And yet, the rolling days will come
when ranges rise, again, and crest a brow,
each elder summit to succumb
then holding high a youthful head at how
its crescent slopes are rendered plumb
and subtle runnels are become
fantastic torrents coursing to the slough.

For, nothing new shall see the sun,
when all has come about in ages past,
and ages full have just begun
as even they are realized, amassed
of peaks and valleys, each and one
in shifting stature never done,
and all upon the earth, supremely vast.

Two Alike

Have you ever known a person so fully that he or she seemed like a part of yourself? Life is punctuated by little friendships, but every so often, along comes that one-in-a-million, who is bound closer to you than any person ought to be. For some, this sort of friendship will never develop. For others, it will be a repeated experience. If approached properly, it is one of the most powerful paths to happiness - and to God - that we may walk, and very few people will ever come across greater wealth in this life. What joy, then, that we can hope for such things, and what wonder that humans, though separated by space and existence, may unite themselves, with nothing more than words, in thought and will and love.


Two Alike

What happiness a friend, a fellow kind,
whose gentle hands attend a heart entwined,
for, long as loving likens two,
they consummate a life anew,
aligned;

but none may know the ties, when so profane,
and none, with open eyes, will ascertain
the bond, invisible, but true,
that suffering cannot subdue,
nor strain;

and so, this holy whole, incorporate
and incorporeal, is our oblate,
to lift an everlasting hue
for treasures that we hold and do
await.