Best Runnels Poems
Yosemite’s Ephemeral Autumn Falls
Bald giants of swift water smoothed pale granite
Mark deep clefts for tumbling summer snowmelt
Rush released from frozen streams once frostbit
Silver swells - Ribbon Falls in pure ice melt -
Ephemeral streams slowed beneath Orion’s belt.
Thin tulle mist from autumn’s gossamer Bridal Veil
Flutters, bathing stony arms embrace of Royal Arch,
Quaking Aspen in Alder Creek covers Misty Trails
Witness near the Staircase wildflowers parched -
Golden leaves on steep slopes from the western larch.
Sheer barren faces only seep crystalline tears
As rivers flow to shallow autumnal rivulets
And Fire Falls wait for wintery floods to reappear
When somber quartz welcomes new Cascades reset
Catching torrent tides, flashing in a fiery sunset.
Wild Cat eyes the Sentinel in thirsting, dried up rills
That thinly coat plutonic rock in a glacial train
Only a trickle floats lazy scarlet sent over these hills
No tumbling drops tickle Waterwheel to turn with rain
While Snow Creek laments in narrow runnels refrain.
No gushing rivers plunge in roaring thunder veils
Nor scramble down Yosemite’s plainly marbled face
Scant silvered dews spill over on Nevada’s trails
For soon the breathing winter storms many falls erase
Till joyful spring redeems autumn in this magic place.
A tribute to the magnificence of Yosemite during autumn.
A river folds upon its banks
with waters deep and cold.
Its molten flow rolls endlessly
from aquifers untold.
It ripples over ancient stones
placed when the earth was cast.
Each sheared and formed the bedrock's course
'neath outflows bold and fast.
Swift currents know of time's slow ebb,
and legends never told.
Its surface gleams beneath the sun
of sagas being scrolled.
The sky above has seen the work
of time's artistic hand,
and knows the melding and the strength
of water and the land.
An ancient bending vein of life
connected with the wold,
that shields enigmas deep as time
in runnels which enfold.
Roll on past hill and fertile land
'til deltas cease your course.
The river and the woodlands speak
of life's primordial source.
Nov. 2014
Common Verse
BRIEF ROMANCE
Fell for a Scottish girl long ago. Pretty as a picture, but
Heart as cold as an empty Edinburgh street on a wet
January Monday morning, when the chiseled
Craigleith sandstone blackened by smoke
Repels the rain from the Forth,
And the steep roofs pour
Water into the runnels
Down the cobbled
Streets.
I have forged
light of distant
stars into galaxies
scattering diamonds trailing
meteor dreams sweeping
empty nights clean
of flame bursting
into a million
shards of white-
hot carbon poured
down runnels to
hell from where
voices clamor for
air and slag
burns fissures into
stygian voids of
inference pulled into
the vortex of doubt
shimmering in particles of light
suspended from
whence we came
to where we
shall return
ALONG
loch-studded moorland
bogs and runnels
and o'er the Highland Pass
antennae alert
I'll twist the wind
to
feed
my
Bonny
Lass
I awake, dull crusted in shadows,
to the swelling roar of hard rain on shingles
wetly dripp'd down rusted gutters,
air thick with cool moisture,
ozone sharp razor clean,
somehow, the sod grew a deep green coat in one night
as dogwoods shed blossoms like fragrant dandruff,
when did spring arrive?
my mind still bundled in deep winter time,
ghosts of snowfields, untouched by sun,
blanket my mood in a stiller time
now shattered by detonations of life
melted by pollen infused with wind
scintillate bands of light burn laser bright
through pregnant clouds rain gray
beams play like shining faeries on the sill
as a weird biology compels me to arise
rush headlong onto verdant lea
dervish twirl'd and humid breathed
but lightswitched it's gone
thunderheads roll like playground bullies
smearing runnels on the window
dogwood prism'd to a streak
as I shrink back to a pillow
smelling faintly of grass.
Orpheus' long, slow, crawl out of Hell
Has left him nothing -- not even himself!
Long had he traveled, sorrowing, with his bride,
and many terrors endured, and now
Unslings his lyre, and looks at her too soon!*
He rushes back... she meets him... calm... forbidding...
"Eurydice, My Love, so sad, your gaze...
Come quickly, ere the shadows form, and take you... No!
Your form dissolves, before the morning's rays!"
She fades without embrace into the caverns of Hell...
The Tears he sheds, that kiss his lanklorn cheeks
Leave bitter runnels, trails as deep as scars,
Just fruits for shadow-journey, pomegranates...
Forgive poor Orpheus, O Wind! O, Stars!
The Tumblers have rolled back into their slots,
And Orpheus, the Lover who fought Death,
Is lonely now, and the Ravens cast their lots.
*according to the Greek Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Hades, the God of the Underworld, agreed to release Orpheus' dead lover, Eurydice, from the Underworld, with one condition: Orpheus could not look back at her, until she emerged from the Underworld. Once he emerged, he thought she had followed him, turned joyfully around! But she was not yet out of Hell, and consequently, Hades required her to return to the realm of Death.
this middle aged rue stirring bummer
haint no stranger to cold,
when dark hen stormy wintry days
eggs hit from Arctic portal en fold
ding Atlantic Seaboard
in a blizzard of bitterly, blindingly, and
brutally sub zero temperatures
from an occasional nor'easter
fiercely gripping hold
the majority years, sans this prolific
recalcitrant scrivener lived
in various and sundry abode
housed within Southeastern
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
with 19*** zip code,
and during my boyhood recall,
how massive ice sheets did erode
the (then) opened expansive farmland,
in preparation for planting time,
where runnels of frigid water flowed
with childish cheeks exposed to glowed
after hours upon
many a green acre got tilled and hoed
despite feeling energized and refreshed
with arms and legs n'er fro zen
aye didst eagerly await with exuberant yen
kickstarting thy body electric
experiencing hearthstone nook
designed and built by Christopher Wren
after heading indoors counting fingers
and toes to make sure, i still got ten
soon hearing the chorus of fauna,
and floral kaleidoscope of color
aground or taking wing
thus, upon thawing out thoughts
drifted toward approaching spring,
the season revitalizing
dormant natural inhabitants,
whose excite (like mine) didst ping
announcing the debut of fecundity
nsync with screeching from the lizard king.
This Spring Equinox (i.e. man date:
12:15 PM Tuesday,
March twentieth two thousand eighteen)
doth rejuvenate
inviolable hibernating animals
and plants, and me equate
to experience sensation,
whereby entire being does inflate
and (despite marital status),
nonetheless envisions another gal asthma mate
no...no...no...please do not think this chap
mean spirited and under rate
the woman (at present taking a siesta,
and i breathe easy),
who oft times doth henpeck, a trait
inherited many a chic hen
(with tantalizing tail feathers)
now (until she awakens)
proscribing yours truly to wait
for my repast most likely ad hoc
moist ideal for any nerdy kid to knock
senseless, the worst facet of self important jock
consisting of pop slop mock
Hungarian Goulash, a melange
of relics from age old meals
transformed into a petrified sawed little rock.
Dinosaurs waiting for stone to erode,
their skeletons covered, uncovered again,
iron that's forgotten the blood where it flowed
and phosphorous leached from a primitive brain--
delicate sabers of soft-stepping cats
enshrouded in shimmering oceans of sand,
strata of relative sediment that's
concealing the bones of the earliest man--
visible traces of numerous beasts,
the sum of Earth's creatures forever enshrined--
signs of their passing won't slow in the least
the rivers and runnels of ongoing time.
"We loved the earth, but could not stay" ~ Loren Eiseley~
Celestial weeping - angel tears,
pouring from Arcadian spheres,
liquid sunshine from Gods own eye,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
Rich pearly drops - heavenly bliss,
quench the fire of my souls abyss,
crystalline rills that gush from high,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
Gentle runnels - watery grace,
baptise my body and my face,
raising my head up to the sky,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
I am new lava flow
covered in dense sand,
the Mojave Desert of the soul.
I am the arid places,
the barren areas,
the well packed pebbles
too tight for seeds.
And in rare events,
when rain releases a prayer,
I quickly
let the waters blow
though my hardened runnels
and glow like a nude vegetable.
Dean Walker
On the subject of an unwanted water feature...
Water, water, everywhere
In rushing rivers down the wall
As loud as grand Niagara’s Fall
In to the Wobbly Bog
Pouring, pouring, endlessly
Insistent flow of running stream
Unwanted runnels carved through dream
Swelling the Wobbly Bog
Soaking, soaking, soggily
The puddle deep, the muddy ground
‘Tis said there was a postman found
Drowned in the Wobbly Bog
Dropping, dropping, gravity
Bleaching brick with scale of lime
On damp of wall the mark of time
Shadows the Wobbly Bog
Gushing, gushing, noisily
Unbalancing the Feng and Shui
No wind to dry the churning sea
Flooding the Wobbly Bog
Madness, madness, sanity
By white noise of incessant drip
Is sunken like a sodden ship
Wrecked in the Wobbly Bog
Misty, misty, spookily
By moonlight come the boggy sprites
With mischief and their tiny lights
Haunting the Wobbly Bog
Wishing, wishing, hopelessly
That some good knight with tool or sword
From Aster or the Water Board
Might conquer the Wobbly Bog
Watching, watching, grumpily
The paint that never dries; dismay
As Wiltshire waters pour away
In to the Wobbly Bog
by Gail
And down came the rain
in senseless disarray
chaotic runnels twisting
in sullen contentious gray
tides high in tempest
pounding pounding
wrathful turbulence churning
stinging riptide biting
then came the winds
bending trees to splinter backs
calling forth a hundred thousand souls
howling from disconsolate depths
for three days the torment spent.
On the last, a single shaft of brilliance
lit on the land, converged upon the sea
reflected back from one hundred thousand souls
and brought our poet home.
(Sanatoga, Pennsylvania location)
I luxuriated as inkling of spring 2021
offered sneak preview today
March third as temperatures
reached low fifties Fahrenheit.
Yours truly began reading
one paperback book
(I purchased three),
and absorbed daily dose of Vitamin D
while secretly ensconced
within favorite nook.
This middle aged rue stirring bummer
favors warmth, boot haint no stranger to cold,
when dark hen stormy wintry days
eggs hit from Arctic portal enfold
ding Atlantic Seaboard
in a blizzard of bitterly, blindingly, and
brutally sub zero temperatures
from an occasional nor'easter
fiercely gripping hold,
the majority years, sans this prolific
recalcitrant scrivener lived
in various and sundry abode
housed within Southeastern
Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
with 19473 current zip code,
and during my boyhood recall,
how massive ice sheets did erode
the (then) opened expansive farmland,
in preparation for planting time,
where runnels of frigid water flowed
with childish cheeks exposed to glowed
after hours upon
many a green acre got tilled and hoed
despite feeling energized and refreshed
with arms and legs ne'er frozen
aye didst eagerly await with exuberant yen
kickstarting thy body electric
experiencing hearthstone nook
designed and built by Christopher Wren
after heading indoors counting fingers
and toes to make sure, I still got ten
soon hearing the chorus of fauna,
and floral kaleidoscope of color
aground or taking wing
thus, upon thawing out thoughts
drifted toward approaching spring,
the season revitalizing
dormant natural inhabitants,
whose excitement (like mine) didst ping
announcing the debut of fecundity
nsync with screeching
from the lizard king
who entered and did break on thru
doors of fame and fortune
becoming out of this world legendary
rock and roll icon,
nevertheless, he joined twenty seven club
for permanent fling.
That evening it rained.
He was glad the diva was dry up there on the warmly lit stage.
The cold rain found every opening in his casual attire,
rivulets ran in runnels seeking out soft parts.
He decided he disliked Puccini outdoors.
He imagines that the dark haired beauty,
the one now singing, chest heaving,
offers him shelter beneath those ample bosoms
she looked the kind of lady that would.
An hour later he swooned away,
wheezing in Tosca's arms.