Long Pileated Poems
Long Pileated Poems. Below are the most popular long Pileated by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Pileated poems by poem length and keyword.
What movement, what visual rhyme and grace ...
I have watched the old willow on my grand-father's farm
Sway in a summer breeze, sweeping the grasses with a soft movement
As sublime as the bow of a master cellist ...
I have rested in a hammock in the afternoon breath of the Caribbean,
Scents carried from the African plains to mix with sugar cane and brine,
Rocking me gently off to slumber in a flawless to-and-fro ...
I have been mesmerized by the perfect sweep of the pendulum
On my parents' grandfather's clock, the rhythmic back-and-forth of a child
On a swing, the tick-tock of a music metronome ...
The sweet up-and-down of a rolling ocean tide, the swooping flight of a
Pileated Woodpecker, the slow-falling drift of a winter snowflake, and the
Proud waving of my country's distinctive flag in the wind ...
But never in my many years on this Earth, have I beheld anything that
Compares with the flawless, hypnotizing, provocative, heat-generating,
Rhythmic dynamism and undulation ... of your voluptuous hips.
~ 1st Place ~ in the "Swagger" Poetry Contest, Line Gauthier, Judge & Sponsor.
trees dilly-O sing.
mellow skies surmise —
they’re not quite blue, white nor gray.
knocking in front and back —
pileated woodpeckers, shockers
with crests, crafty
to home owls and bats,
like royal courts of yore
dillydally the enemy within
mine walls.
the oaks shade their eyes,
press into my panes,
scratch during a storm,
rain on my parade.
yet, I can’t help...but adore
the pines and oaks,
ivy that wraps serpentine around bark,
wild flowers ready to leap
on ballet toes,
touch my nose with romantic scent.
so Spring,
the sachet of hidden things,
like a freeze game come to life
with intrigue, potentiality
of pairings — doves, robins,
crows and the like.
what if i could climb the tall trunk
high, below the unseen clouds —
easy does it.
my hair sailing like a pirate.
my grin foolhardy.
my heart doesn’t know what it needs.
it needs trees.
2/27/2021
Just past far as you can go,
yonder, where the crawdads sing,
out beyond time’s ebb and flow,
festival is full in swing.
Bullfrog’s on the tympany,
joined by pileated drums.
Katydids join company;
bold and bright, the bayou hums.
River Daughter glides the marshes,
carried forward by the song.
Haunting, her harmonic partials
rise up high above the throng.
Time to sleep, my lovely children,
lay your heads upon my breast.
Hush, a blanket, mutes the bayou,
safe and snug in slumbered rest.
Morning breaks in warm orange glow,
yonder, where the crawdads sing.
Casting off their bedtime clothes,
festival is back in swing.
—————
for the Feel Free Poetry Contest
sponsored by Sara Kendrick
written on 12/20/22
[ Quote 6 ]
Rereading the poems of others
and my own. Community across
time and graves. What's left
exceeds in significance
one's last moment. Yet
his last moment must have been
exceedingly important
for the poet.
Nothing he did that day will seem meaningful.
While we prosecute the war
a pileated woodpecker and red squirrel
compete for sunflower seeds.
A winter slow
to assert itself.
I can still see my mother's father and his bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts
quiet weekday mornings.
Both grandfathers read sports
pages religiously. I don't know
if my grandmother who gave me the
anthology of, to date, dated
unreadable poems read poetry.
I remember my mother's mother spoke
rarely as an animal.
Writing but not knowing where I'm going
unlike Joan Didion justly
cannibalizing candidates
who didn't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights or
Federalist Papers. It's late,
I have not vacuumed or shopped for food.
Instead I reread
Phil Levine's Salami.
Show me a place where I can be in a little island far above the sea where the skies touch the hills and transmit a message to my window sill. Show me a place where I can be to touch your heart and sing sweet melodies to thee and when the night rings out in the skies I will gaze at the stars and sing you a sweet lullaby. It seems just like yesterday when you kneel down at my bedside to pray and the moon was my covering and the miracle appears in the morning.
Show me a place where I can be to join your friends and company, a place that bears its bosom in the sea and I can lay my head in the sand and sing sweet melodies for thee.
Show me a place where I can be to romance with the fish in the great big sea, to ride out in the fishing boat and catch some trout. I would hold the sword fish by its mouth and put the Atlantic cod in my bag. I would catch hundreds of mackerel for my deceased dad and put the great white shark in a chokehold.
I would catch some red mullet and make some Barramundi tea for you, and catch the mahi-mahi for the aquarium and prepare the haddock and anchovies for dinner and reserve the red seabream for supper.
Show me a place where I can be to find peace and tranquility, to listen to the birds in the hill as they fly from tree to tree and watch the pileated woodpecker conversing with the bald eagle. The robin and the pelican have nothing in common but when the sorrow join them, they can sing a happy song.
I can see you standing there yearning to join me over here, your heart is real and you are full of zeal and the artic loon will meet with you at noon accompanied by the cormorants, the great auk, dovekie and the storm petrels.
Show me a place where I can be so that I can spend quality time with thee. Take me to Gibraltar in a boat and leave me at the French border with white wine and steak frites. Show me a place where I can be.
February 27th Lower Peninsula of Michigan
One week of true cold and snow is all
This year
Today is the warmest day ever recorded
For this entire month
An ancient age is passing
Winter shorter
To the flowing length of my shadow
Stretched longer and further from the elder sun
In my backyard
Pileated Woodpeckers like black-eyed dolls
Dressed in too-tight red coats
Are early treasures
To the arms of Silver Beeches and Black Walnuts
Forest thrashes
At the tiny blades of hundreds of robins
Descended
Mis-led
By a premature pull of migration
Too soon
Those permanent words pursed to the lips of us all
When doomed
A philosopher once said that the universe knows
A life is the same in purpose
Whether it be a still birth or that of a 90-year old
Mother or father
I’m not so sure but intrigued
Robins continue to fork and fling last year’s gray leaves
Up in the air and out of the way
To their mad determined pecks at the hard ground
And knotted branches
With pure instinct my house of cats
Look up
Duck and trill at the windows
Like London dodging the Blitzkrieg
Birds can go back to sleep
But blossoms cannot
There’s not much future left
For Michigan’s apple and cherry orchards
This I know in my old bones
As the robins sing
The fragrance of fruit a sail of the past
On the Maiden’s misplaced wind.
"Piscator non solum piscatur"
("There is more to fishing than fish.)"
______________________________
Brown trout anglers catch few fishes
and almost always let them go
barbless hooks make more for wishes
then creels full to dazzle
children’s eyes.
Brown trout anglers tell tales distilled
of truth, of rises that didn’t take and
fish as long as your arm that always
get away.
They reminisce over glimpses of otters,
mink, beavers, muskrat and deer.
pileated woodpeckers, wild turkey
snapping turtles, frogs and snakes
orchids, iris and skunk cabbage
mosquitoes, blackflies and nettles.
And if you define a river by its banks
and not its water, then it remains the
same waiting for next year.
__________________________________
This boy must be in season,
this blaze-headed feather jack
hammering shack up condos
into swooned oaks, sautéing up fire
ants for a seductive nibble in the pulp.
You can hear him all over the island
a mating pummel; his peckered pocks
embarrass us along our saunters
such a committed pecker, this woody,
drilling wood, making mating dust
around your mailbox by the road,
out there, an exhibitionist hammering
Nessum Dorma’s into the timber,
belting away at his craft;
his hard wired love gut
to persist, and the fade out
of us jaded human shucks,
looking through our
windshields at such wide
wondering howls
in the dead of the wood.
Imperfect world, purposeless person.
I retired to pursue perfection
learn jazz tunes, woody and herbaceous plants,
read every inch of English literature,
Scientific American and Foreign Affairs,
have an affair with an American.
Oh, and by the way, before you ask, I'm from Mars.
Orbiting your planet, admiring the girls.
Paraphrasing prayers by George Herbert to share
with Jesus believers on talk radio shows
where we try to bring your lives into expressible states
before it’s too late and climate change inundates you.
Reversed thunder, savior-side-piercing spear,
one day you’re feeling fine, the next not.
We’re pretty matter of fact, clear about
the fact of death. Once you’re gone most of us forget
your face and previous accomplishments. The place
you lived is repopulated with the next generation (of aliens)
and that ought to be a comfort, a sort of restful
certainty all is well, nothing special need be done.
Bluebirds are back, crows are mating on the sky
and chasing hawks away from their nests. Juncos
and sparrows glean together. I hear pileated woodpeckers
jackhammering and barred owls hooting soothingly.
Herons smoothing feathers and spearing fish.
Everything is as one would wish.
Numberless are the world's wonders
but none more wonderful than aliens.
Tucked high into a saddle in the hills,
Set far above a river vale below,
With wooded glades and waters calm and still,
I cannot think a finer place to go.
A daybreak in the east will steal your breath:
Tequila sunrise bathed in swaths of pink.
A breeze is gently blowing ‘round the hill;
The solitude gives ample space to think.
The redbuds are in bloom in fuchsia hues.
The pileated drums beat out grub wars.
New life abounds, emerging from decay.
Above, a lazy red hawk circling, soars.
When I’m away, I long here to return,
To wander oaken trails and hillsides roam.
My dream vacation, here before my eyes;
I pinch myself, for I’ve arrived back home.
————-
Seventh Place Winner
For the My Dream Vacation Poetry Contest
Sponsored by L Milton Hankins
Written 03/04/2022