Best Footholds Poems

across the Doggerland dogged people trudge
  Neanderthals, Heidelbergers...Sapiens, the last ones standing
  hairy mammoths, heavy life bearing down
  the mighty maw of an ice wall crunches, enforcing southward retreat
  remoulding the land for the next migration
  steady thawing reveals a...

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Listen here!
I am hurting up all over
Lying here undiscovered

Papparazzi cumulus are jostling in my street
God is taking photos of the remnants of His sheep
Climbing footholds and gripping on the rungs
Heaving and panting I'm a-aching in my lungs
Ascend this twisted ladder of my helix
I'm not the...

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Before I first crawled from a mythical ocean
light years before history began to take itself seriously
I was told to spin new myths.

The dead-not-so-dead gave me buckets of myths.
“This is your mission,” they said, “carry these buckets
one by one to a place called, solid footholds."

The buckets...

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Endangered Trailblazing
                                  by Odin Roark

Astride his father’s shoulders,
Like a double decker bus,
There...

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I am drizzled from thoughts that the heart footholds
With words of wisdom which are pure as gold

And as I form into an underlying phrase
Every sentence takes it’s own place

With rhymes of words dancing on the page
Every formation is imbedded to the base

With librettos of connotation...

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The dark, drenched forest
was tinkling with tuis and bellbirds,
blind to the ledger book,
the bill of lading,
the glint in the eye of the ax.

Pious settlers wired the land for religion
and switched on the lights.
The natives were dazzled,
but loved the portly man in the red suit
who gave...

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My Shield, My Sentinel
Savior Of My Soul
Guards My Path Well
… and My Footholds …

My Shield, My Sentinel
Lifting Up My Light
Even If I Fell
He Keeps Me In Sight

No Chicanery, No Treachery
Can Succeed In Stopping Me
Nor Can Lasting-Harm Me
Nor Forever Hunt Me

My Mortal-Soul’s Safety
Held In His Hands,...

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There's nothing to hold on to
When you begin to slide,
And the walls begin to crumble
And you have nowhere to hide.
I look to find the child in me,
That stranger to anxiety,
But the footholds of my history
Are blurred footprints in the 
sand.

I try to hold on to...

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The rock that to the climber reaches out with
jagged arms
And to the sore foot of a traveler turns a tough
rough back
Holds within its harshness
The promise of swift marches
To they who aspire towards its summit.
And to each of them it someday proves
That in the roughness of...

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I never cared to do the dangerous things, and liked to play it safe,
But the strict bonds of ordinariness, can oftentimes start to chafe.

I always preferred to cover my bets, for I hated the idea of failure,
Like the early days of colorful gardens, when greys...

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Fabulous friction,
Your magic transforms 
The steep rock into footholds.
In delicate balance
We dance on invisible
Stairs to the summit....

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Take hold the valley 
For in its depths are footholds 
Made fast by victors...

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I try to establish strong mental footholds
In resemblance to fort knox physical strongholds
Through repentance I lost the spiritual blindfold
So every sentence I mock material billfolds

I seek an understanding of answers beyond the proven
Discreet but demanding how choices response woven
Steep iceberg floating trying to go past...

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*Image of Original Gerber baby, Ann Turner Cook by KTVU.


R.I.P. Ann Leslie Cook, nee Turner


Ann Cook
Her look

Not name
Became

Households
Footholds

Aspects
Effects

Neighbor's
Favors

Charcoaled
Turned gold

Adored
Reward

Threshold
Behold

Quest and
Destined

Become
A mom

Four kids
Amids

Teacher
Writer

Thank you
Trueblue

My face
By grace

Glass jars
All-stars

Trademarks
Remarks

Sublime
Lifetime

Apprise
Demise

Gerbers
Furthers

Bless you
Adieu

Godsend
Ascend


*R.I.P. Ann Leslie Cook, nee Turner*

At five months old, she posed for their family's neighbor, Dorothy Hope Smith, who...

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When Socretes, Plato and Aristotle teamed,
the line between the will to learn married the will to teach.
When Raphael, Leonardo, and Michael lived at Belvedere,
Art would see her form take shape and pave the way for years.
When Beethoven met Mozart on one Vienna spring,
the voice of...

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