Best Updrafts Poems
Silent, she slips from her stronghold’s security,
safely tucked high on the cliff in her nest.
Cautious, she stays in the shadows afforded her,
sorrowful, hesitant, missing the rest.
Her parents and siblings had sought out the sunshine,
flying the open air, learning their craft.
Soaring and diving, they basked in the currents;
she, feeling poorly, by chance, had stayed back.
Sounds like a cannon had rung out above her;
shrieking and screaming, she watched the first fall.
Caught in the open with no chance for cover,
savagely, swiftly, death came for them all.
Hugging the hillside, she used the thick foliage,
bobbing and weaving, avoiding the limbs,
calling on instincts she knew not inside her,
fine-tuned adjustments through flexes and trims.
Cover was ending; the ocean awaited her.
Her heart was racing, her mind strangely clear.
Mother had taught her to seek out the currents;
a warm water pocket meant updrafts were near.
Tucking, she dove as she flew in the open,
a bullet herself, towards shiny blue glass.
Braking so subtly, just at the last moment,
she shot across wave tops, dizzily fast.
There! A small change in the water beneath her.
Pulling up hard, she flapped skyward and soared.
Where she was headed lay unknown before her,
on past the sunset to some distant shore.
Written: November 06, 2023
___________________________________________
A swarm of herring gulls amassed
Nexus Nautilus nabbed by zealous winds,
whitening the black soil
we hold spears in our hands.
blood-stained thorns on the side
sullen squawks a skirmishing sporophyte,
dubious, grayish rumors must be buried
drave in a drizzle, drape to deities.
Installation of sentry fences
Sisyphean stones
anchor down using seal and string
flaws in the swings used by blacksmiths
Unborn burning bullion bludgeon
Savage sunless swords embryonic
Edgeless, with no reflections.
Each peak over the Edenic Steppes is sprayed,
using torn paper candles as bait
climbing scaffolds with lumber rungs
pounding of leather-heavy boots
darkened, grimacing features
Flocks failing feathers or flight.
Our hold slips on windswept
Windswept updrafts carry us away
as offspring of the royal family.
Dandelions – Visual 1
Stems rooted as future generations silently drift
Dancing in the awakening of hope’s enlightening sunrise
Buoyed upon the updrafts of fate and synchronicity.
1/30/2015
Submitted to Glorious Sijo Fields – Poetry Contest
Sponsor – Andrea Dietrich
Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud,
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud,
I drifted so peacefully through the floes.
Updrafts from silent streams beneath arose
lifting craft’s nose, unexpectedly plowed
through looming cumulus's potential foes,
Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud.
My teeth clinching, I bared tense lips so proud;
Sensed gusts of air across the broadened floes,
Kissed cerulean sky above allowed
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose.
Fecklessly, thoughts wondered how high she goes
before narrow cockpit collapsed to shroud,
and leaps of joy turned into flailing woes
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud.
For a moment, my breathing burst aloud,
A sudden chill, fear inside my chest froze
leaps of joy turned to sad, flailing allowed,
I drifted so peacefully through the floes.
I shall land on the grassy field unbowed
Receive the welcomed accolades from those
who soloed the winds, powerless, uncowed
by dangers the upper sky chose to pose,
Ah, drifting leisurely.
SECOND PLACE WINNER
Written/Edited March 1, 2021, slightly modified May 21, 2022
for Rondeau Redouble - Life's Struggles contest
Sponsored by Constance La France
Soaring above the bushfire's flames,
astounded crows, blacker than charred
tree trunks, flap spectral wings.
Numb with loss, no caws drone out.
Wind rushes in updrafts from
the smoky heat: to rise as a vengeful spirit,
to hammer at fleeing pinions,
to witness aimless circles above coal black trees,
now absent of rough stick nests.
Suzanne Delaney
Dream Keys
by Odin Roark
A NY mantra
Rent the rentable
Move the movable
Key the keyable
Apartments
Four-wall-guardian of yesterday’s youth
Vacuous cellmates of old age loneliness
All part of a cyclic maze
All having a key
Urban life’s Rubik’s Cube turnover
Today’s the day
“Two rooms”
“New paint”
“Clean window”
“No-squeaky floorboards”
Superintendent loves to present
Move in
Keys
Entrance door
Mailbox
Apartment
Laundry room
All yours
A windowsill vase of plastic roses
Your welcome of faded memories
The window to the people below
Your traveled city as roommate
Through another glass darkly
Gotta love it
Pea green layering
Over cracked and peeling bygones
Your very own chipped-paint scrapbook
A giant shoebox of ghostly images
Once possessing your castle-keys
Settle in
Struggle
Dream
Survive
Stand at your window
Watch canyon updrafts
Swirl your make-believe snowflakes
Carrying them skyward
Mixing with sparkling darkness
Where every star is yours
Count the days
Where light to see
Will be owned by neighboring towers
Where former tenants came young
Left old
Where thrown cups and china
Christened walls
And confinement’s anger and tears
Found solace in an ever inviting empty bathtub
Where pounding fists
Rattled bathroom door hinges
While a child hid beneath a bed
Smiling tearful thanks
A wanderlust roach
His ever-faithful friend
All yours
Here
Where a Sammy Glick got started
And an undergrad
An engineer
A Radical leftist
A piano teacher
All touched
All turned
All once secured your keys
So
Add your imprint
Become tomorrow’s remembered page
The scrapbook knows no end
This is Manhattan
Scenes will erupt
Hysterics will rebirth
Life will live
Maybe live some more
Then
Your turn to pass the keys
Your turn to pile worn memories at the curb
Mattresses always appreciated
Stand across the street
Watch the ever-smiling Super
Hand the keys to the next habitant
And then…
Go
Never to forget your contribution
Leaving behind another preparatory memory
Allowing the coming year
Your next season of imaginings
To dream of another home
Somewhere
Waiting…
Gifted with keyless entry?
Loneliness gone?
Haiku With Variations (Both Sonnet & Free Verse)
Haiku Number 2
hail rides air updrafts
raindrops crater planet's skin
your breath’s clouds, fall skies
May 12, 2016
Mother of a Winter’s Night – Shakespearian Sonnet
Her distressed sighs rise up like nascent hail,
(Tears blown to ever colder zones of sky),
Where frozen prayers see gravity prevail,
Release their pain on what they think is lie.
These raindrop tears sew cratered fields as well,
While farmer's labor washes out to to sea,
(Those tender roots that split rock - time's to tell),
But impact strips her lover’s legacy.
And with the fall as cold means leaves turn blue
New growth goes dormant and awaits Spring’s lease,
Confusion reigns as her breath’s clouds subdue
And haiku’s calmer images release.
If I am wrong let no one take offense
She’s not to blame, but my own lack of sense.
May 14, 2016
Poet's Note:
Please excuse the paraphrase of Shakespeare Sonnet #116's couplet. :-)
Mother of a Winter’s Night – Free Verse
Your distressed sighs are the updrafts
That hurl nascent hailstones skyward,
Freezing tears colliding, clumping as they go
Into tortured spheres that could kill a horse,
Certainly knock shingles from the newest of roofs,
Or pound a field of sunflowers straight into the ground!
My vulnerable fields cratered by your tears,
Whether in their frozen form or flowing wet,
Top soil now enroute to the sea itself,
As if the history of its creation were of no consequence,
Tender roots that pried a farm from solid rock,
Swelling into cracks that are always present,
Turning stone to fertile soil.
The sea’s surface, that not so long ago
Mirrored a most gorgeous sunset,
Now a tortured and a rabid foam,
Laid to waste, craters overlapping craters,
Gone in an eye blink, all my love a non-event
In geologic time it seems.
Winter has come early as your breath’s clouds
Mask all reason and confuse me,
A bitter chill fills every corner of fall’s skies,
Even leaves turn blue and cannot breathe,
Oxygen sucked from the room we live in,
My only recourse is poetry and prayer.
May 13, 2016
Long Tooth
Poet's Note:
It was an interesting challenge to try to write the same poem three times and keep the meaning of the original haiku intact.
Ecology, Humanity, Me, & Tea
A fox at the altar.
Bee nests to seek before light.
A rabbit where the fox’d trot.
(Foxes have only ever trot. Perhaps fast, or nimbly, or slow - they do not walk.
They do not run.)
Morning flies...
And the sun is slow to rise.
The clouds are only a smidge more awake than I.
Sleep-rolling by.
A duck flies, no tumbles, no whazzles past.
No more gainly than when waddling on sod.
Morning hawks take to the barest of first updrafts;
rising like mists on the lake where dragonflys slowly
flex their diaphanous gemstone wings. The ones who
keep as captor the rainbows from the last day’s thunderstorm.
A frog {Maybe toad. [Probably frog.]} somewhere in the pottery.
Awaiting the repottery of potted plants, themselves awaiting the
heat of day and breeze’s gift of sway. Hiding in the repository of pottery;
perhaps in rainwater held in temporary reservoir - a feast for frog, a womb
for gnats...this believing squeak-croaking, near-whistling frog calls out in love -
or something very much like it. From the dark. Not near at all to kindred souls.
At even the odd hours I hear it call. Her call? His call? The call we all...make.
Know.
Offer.
Await.
The barn cat, asleep, misses it all.
And misses none of it.
Soon he sidles up.
In need of scritches and time with.
The tea cools, the leaves unfurl.
The tannins dye.
The world wakes.
The lupine at the altar try their hand at purple.
No goose today.
The sibling blue pines put one in minds...
of poetry. And work awaiting.
Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud,
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud,
I drifted so peacefully through the floes.
Updrafts from silent streams beneath arose
lifting craft’s nose, unexpectedly plowed
through looming cumulus's potential foes,
Ah, drifting leisurely inside the cloud.
My teeth clinching, I bared tense lips so proud;
Sensed gusts of air across the broadened floes,
Kissed cerulean sky above allowed
Watching hot sun’s rays glance across the nose.
Fecklessly, thoughts wondered how high she goes
before narrow cockpit collapsed to shroud,
and leaps of joy turned into flailing woes
of the winged drone, stealthily slipping proud.
For a moment, my breathing burst aloud,
A sudden chill, fear inside my chest froze
leaps of joy turned to sad, flailing allowed,
I drifted so peacefully through the floes.
I shall land on the grassy field unbowed
Receive the welcomed accolades from those
who soloed the winds, powerless, uncowed
by dangers the upper sky chose to pose,
drifting leisurely inside the cloud.
Written/Edited March 1, 2022
Submitted to "2022 Poetry Marathon Mile 4"
Sponsored by Mark Toney
SECOND PLACE WINNER
Written/Edited March 1, 2021
for Rondeau Redouble - Life's Struggles contest
Sponsored by Constance La France
HYPERGRAPHIA -- "STARECASES"
twisted as wrought iron spiraling down
surveying top gears stark dark regalia
holdhigh on tight here comes another
maniacal express spinning
HYPERGRAPHIA
dying I throw down a key in a sock and sing all the way up
bowing forehead to ground to catch thermal updrafts
grabbing more sky to do the work hanging plump like a plum
disease that confirms even normal is an unreachable entity
lofty orphaned kite out of touch out of sight that never
smells gender kissing mouth that swallows hurtful pride
crack open the gaze of sleeping animals… I am one and so are you
experiencing life with our blunted truths I would keep you open all
night even if it hurt us as we choke on the intensity and
move and cry through all life’s lies
then.. push our headboard when bored out to sea
sailing out of earshot past you and me so thoroughly
you distracted by the crease in my accent
I by your crown as the waterfalls drown your caress
to make a noise from your mouth with the
radical skill of my hands and sebaceous glands
as we free-flow our thoughts
© Kim van Breda—28 December 2015
I am asleep
I dream
I am flying
I am the sky
outside myself
above streets and buildings
Time and place
do not exist
I am moonlight
staring back at the sun
Updrafts of light
echoes off distant plateaus
above the blue earth
into the sparkling void
Walking up the stars
through the nine heavens
and all nine earths
I am me
set free
so astally
in a sea of ecstasy....
Magnificent strength
Gliding on natures updrafts
Surveying the land
Nathan Bane Leccese
© All Rights Reserved 05/22/2009
Every now and then
life creates a gem of a human being,
a gem of genuineness
a body of truth, sincerity
written into sublime poetry.
And like all that is good
upon this planet, a situation
that creates reactions from those
usually, one eyed opinionated bigots
those full of self importance,
able to sweep all conception
bar their own out of existence.
So this Canadian genius
like the setting sun
has faded into the horizon,
no doubt to rise again somewhere,
after all the setting of the sun
and the rising of are perpetual,
and in his words not mine.
(*A perfect fusion of dark and light.)
Has I’m sure he is!
*Borrowed from his first poem
posted here on soup “Updrafts”
© Harry J Horsman 2012
For Jeffers: On seeing Tor House and Hawk Tower
For the first time
The Tor stones have grown wistful
Through time and absence since
Your verses filled the house with
Creative passion; the gate is locked.
A hawk rides on coastal updrafts
Calling to the empty tower
For the man who is no more
But, soul-bound, searches for.
Pain is separation; Birth,
Death, a raindrop, you, me.
Better to be a lichen
Or a puddle.
You were lying by Una when
Your poems found me, a soldier
Amid the sucking cesspools
Of jungle war.
The verses slapped my naïveté;
An instrument of politics
Acting out the Groundhog Day
War Loop for my generation.
Oh yes, Shine Perishing Republic and The Wild God
Of The World still offer their warnings, but to no more
Receptive ears. The grip of the self on humanity has loosened
“Only a little” while the ooze of the festering separations
Still flows from the primal Flaw. And the rattle of the drums
Calls for the sons and daughters of this time.
Jeffers, when your lovers come and call back
The words of your mind without speaking, drumbeats
Fade, the hawk finds her soul mate, and the separations,
For that pacific interlude, begin to cohere.
Copyright Paul M Thomson 2017
Sometimes I think i should try,
Should spread my wings and fly
Soar through a cloud as a spirit so free
With land below, all the sights I see
Diving towards the earth below
Spread my wings out catching air causing me to slow
Leveling out and quickly shooting away barely above ground
Wind whistling as I flew, a soul unbound
Over a lake I trail fingers through crystal clear waters so cold
Feeling freedom unfold
A slight shift of wings back up so high I flew
Wings soaring damp with the morning Dew
Catching up with an eagle, together we rode the updrafts so high
My whole being was one with the sky
Back through another cloud we flew just for luck
So high we went coming to float just briefly then the wings we tuck
Falling back to earth trusting to luck
Closed my eyes free falling from the heavens I plunged gathering speed
Faster and faster I felt the need
Reaching for the feeling of fearlessly falling so free
Full of life and all that be
Then catching an updraft
Flying is a beautiful craft
I carelessly began a barrel roll
Let gravity take its toll
Across the sunlit sky
So full of the joy I did cry
Freedoms ultimate glory
Had a new story
Floating across skies so
blue
Love so true
That eagle and I racing
The sun we were pacing
Going from cloud to cloud
Heart eating so loud
A thrilling game of hide and go seek
The eagle took a peek
Screeched his good bye
Owning the sky
He went his own way
Such a beautiful day
I had spread out my wings just resting in flight
Wings glistening from the morning light
Time catches up I feel so
Free
No beautiful a sight did I ever see
Watching the set of the days sun
Just telling of the day now done
Announcing the arrival of night
With the coming of evening came the end of my glorious flight
Flying back across the evening sky
Back across the the distance that I did fly
across area I liked to play and roam
Across the empty sky to home
Back to my chair where always did sit alone
To quietly ponder all I was shown