Best Lengthening Poems

It was late in gorgeous springtime, and I was teaching my class,
A lesson in African history, and the events of time's hourglass.

My fourth graders were very attentive, as I recounted the glory,
Of tales such as Mansa Musa's, maybe the richest man in history!

Sultan of Mali...

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Those rarer men I once fondly 
knew...                             
Many dead now...
What remains of them they are so 
Few....

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"For all sad words of tongue and pen,
 the saddest are these, 'It might have been'."              
               ...

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When Summer starts her transitory reign, 
King Sun, her beau, has steadily ascended, 
brightening a sky that, for a time, 
shall be his lovely mistress’ domain. 

He reaches out his welcoming warm rays 
across the span of Summer’s first official day, 
lengthening them just as...

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Spring


      When the Season turns and Old Winter spent,

      Sudden colour blossoms on budding trees.

      The daffodil blooms and young Spring’s sweet scent

      Is gentle...

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Like green leaves that turn yellow and wither away
Like buds that blossom and fade away
Like white clouds that turn sullen gray
Like lengthening shadows darken the day
The whirligig of time brings forth
Mysteries hidden in time's womb
The only certain destiny death
That stone cold tomb.
Like a flickering flame...

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VIII

In the minds fixed eye I see five newly discovered graves,              
Headless lions sat atop an impregnable "Triumphal Gate";         
And guileful Cassandra, she laid...

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He is caught between one life and another
while my pain lengthens like a shadow of the moon
We are like leaves, played with by the wind

O lengthening dark vision
reaching across our lives
It came, at last, without a sound...
his leave taking came without a word,
but we both...

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NOT   JUST   ANY   SUNSET

This lunar sunset was what he’d most miss  -
They always said death was like this : 
Slo-mo and black-and-white
Like an old movie trite.
It had happened to him twice before : then
At rush hour on the...

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Snow draped folds like loose Cashmere curtains cover the evergreen boughs
pining for the lengthening days of each succeeding sunrise,
reticent to see the cold of night fall once again on the lonely landscape.
In this fallow world of darkness quiet is the norm, hushed silence,
nothingness, invading the...

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After winter's cold drought
Before the summer's bright
Comes the weeks of waking
Diminished shades of night
Each new dew-drop sunrise
Finds lengthening, the light

Greens begin their creep
Hallowed - life's rebound
In this rouse from sleep
Jutting thru cold ground
Kissed and petal-crowned

Life finds its way
May bursts alive
Now the new day
Opens to thrive

Priceless...

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Grapevines flow in gentle lines
blanketing the rich hillsides.
Clothed in hues of golds and reds
harvest barreled wine in sheds.  

Dappled light breaks misty morn
blackbirds stir and are reborn.
Spiders weave through branch and leaf
dewdrops glisten, earth smells sweet. 

Lone oak spreads its branches wide
reaching up to...

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Evil creeps upon the face of the earth
Like lengthening shadows in a hot sun
All that it touches loses its true worth
Chaos and delusion, have now begun

The ultimate illusion has caught man
There is no stopping it until the end
Driven by greed instead of one’s need
It will...

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Potion number nine to six mixing instincts 
Primitive passion possessed bodies boiling points
Love consuming lust traversing together past trust
Tangled hands mingle with talon arms lengthening lost time
United legs step to cross paths at the same rate different lanes
Claiming bottomless renewed nights holding on tight
Tossed and...

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No bougainvillea here,
Wind and wave-tossed shores
Know no such blossom.
What blooms next stormy seas
In western outposts far removed,
Unknown to sun-soft living ?
When silken purple drapes
The open sky, and folds of grey
And pastel blue hang mingled,
Dark-mirrored in the land below,
The daily reckoning may be heard,
Another storm from...

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