Long Sloughs Poems
Long Sloughs Poems. Below are the most popular long Sloughs by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Sloughs poems by poem length and keyword.
Tell me of your peace.
Let it tell your story now
Of trials and tribulations, a tale not of dreams
Weary from a journey of self-discovery
My child, know the comfort in your peace
You feel hope in this familiar place
As it gently sloughs the pain away
Tell me of your peace
In which we all are blessed and free
Search throughout your soul sweet child
Peer not within your cluttered mind
Look out to rest your tired eyes but do not let them see
Solace found strewn upon daily thoughts is fleeting at it's best
Lasting merely moments, in untouched souls a true peace
Oh yes! You'll know when you arrive but only you will know
The world will melt away as a candle left under the blazing sun
Away away, until you feel home again, an unguided familiar scene
An innocence once lost is restored, all sins suddenly forgiven
Soaking this in with relucant ease,
Breathe it deep with a slow release
Take it in, delight in details you discover
Be calm here child, please have no fear, I am here
You are safe in this place of yours, no hurt no tears
We share not the same peace, no no
Unique to each of us, yet stranger to none
Trust in more than what you see, know beauty is within reach
We share this unspoken bond of freedom from ourselves
Please young one, listen closer now
I say, leave it all behind you love, it will only weigh you down
Cleanse yourself of careless words and careful lies
I know you're weary, let go of all you carry
Don't be afraid, here you are burden free
Trust in you, blessed one, it's easier than you believe
Sweet child, tell me now if you see
Peace resting deep within
Waiting for you
For you to let it be
The issue's not yet signed and sealed.
Three cogent answers hold the field,
and no-one knows which is the best.
I'll set them out before you, lest
the question go a-begging.
First
(and this one's frequently rehearsed,
but holds least clout - at least with me),
the Mason-Dixon Line must be
the great divide: South, slavery,
North, freedom. Dixon, Dixie - see?
The trouble is that way back when
those two unstinting Englishmen
surveyed the Line, none under heaven
(we're talking seventeen sixty-seven)
could care a cuss if blacks were pressed
to toil unpaid at whites' behest.
And Delaware, by no means least
of slaving states, lies north and east
of said divide.
Manhattan, now:
though it may try to disavow
a past that wasn't quite PC,
New York had sloughs of slavery.
A Mister Dixie held some lands
(right where the Guggenheim now stands):
the human property he owned
led folks to talk of "Dixie's Zone"
whenever slaves were being mentioned,
and gradually, by extension,
this came to mean the South. Could be.
Pursuing perspicuity
is noble in itself, and so
I offer as my final throw
the one which really should have won
(who measures merit, though, by fun?)
Louisiana, sovereign state,
sought (sensibly) to circulate
its very own banknotes. Problem was,
the Cajun cash collapsed, because
nobody trusted it. Each bill
was written in (for good or ill)
official French, so - quelle caprice! -
each sawbuck said, not ten, but "dix".
Thus, Dixie's fixed in every brain
as something quaint, quixotic, vain.
He was a common-place stranger,
Occupying the corner table every night,
And every day, alone but never lonely,
In a tropical beach bar, with thatched roof and no walls.
He sat facing the ocean, with a beer in his hand,
And glassy eyes that looked to a distant place,
Wearing tattered shorts, a straw hat and big white beard,
Looking more like Santa on vacation.
It was an ocean he gazed upon, but not what he saw,
As visions of large open fields of cattle took its place,
Wheat fields and mountain ranges, creeks and sloughs,
Forests, beaver ponds and deer.
His glass of beer was never empty and never full,
And his eyes never left the ocean,
The canvas that painted pictures of a life before now,
And the common-place stranger dreamed alone.
There were the tourists, the locals and the pretty island girls,
All spending their time and money,
With laughter and gaiety, teasing and flirting,
But the common-place stranger was unaware.
He looked like he was in his element,
In this tropical bar facing the ocean,
His skin, rough and tanned and weather-beaten,
And no one remembered when he first arrived.
He was just a common-place stranger,
Blending into the fabric and landscape of this island paradise,
But a paradise for whom? - not for him,
For his mind was in another place and his eyes searched the ocean.
One day he was gone,
And the corner table was conspicuous in its emptiness,
But no one ever sat there,
For it belonged to the common-place stranger.
by David Ronald Bruce Pekrul
It was a long lonely night at the lumber mill
Just listening to a whippoorwill
In the dark beside a logging road.
I’ve got fifteen cars of timber on my load.
The yard stinks of bleeding sap and cut pine.
Roll on, roll on down the line.
I’ll be on my way before the dawn
Through the bottoms and the swamps.
Before first sun light on the timber lot,
Backwater sloughs and cypress knots.
On rusted rails I’ll be making time
When the horizon winks a thin gold line.
I’ll be rumbling down this long steel track,
Somewhere between porch light and pitch black
While coyotes call out for the night.
My engines will be roaring around the bend
As the night bird’s song comes to an end.
Roll on, morning train, roll on.
Then day break will lay on morning dew,
As the logging town fades out of view.
I’ll give my whistle a blow, blow
To make the farmer’s rooster crow.
By the time the sun has warmed me,
Old men will be drinking their coffee
As I roll through the station.
I ask you leave an open car
For misty eyed hobos and runaways.
Let them know the clotheslines, highways,
And countless telephone poles.
Sunshine and shadows clicking time
Beside the graveyards, grain silos,
And other lonely places.
They’ll be greeted by multitudes of sparrows,
Smiling house wives in their bathrobes,
Unwashed cars and graffiti
Behind the back yards of society.
They’ll find comfort in the rhythm of the day
Beside the dusty dirt roads and alleyways.
Roll on, big freight train, roll on.
A hazelnut breeze awakens us
To another day in the show no one signed up for
From an accidental scream
Or selfish architects of love
Rained out
Silver skies that block the sun
Do others cry when the shine reappears
To break a perfect aesthetic of gloom?
Rained out
The cancellation of a party no one wanted
Light of pocket and of mind
To forever repeat the same aesthetic
Kiss the sky
Yet another day passes as before
Nothing to review as the dark rises
An eternal tally of the same hours
Kiss the sky
Rain washes away what has stood strong
A husk of promise shambling about
Crooked of back and empty of stomach
Where is the motivation?
A feast laid before me rots
As the effort to consume would kill me
Before I could get the first bolus down
Where is the motivation?
My oval stones propel me
Gazing at the hell I left behind
Pushing back endless branches ahead
Rotten of flesh and of mind
The dark shine sends my heart aflutter
A princess of the moon kisses me sweetly
And where her lips were, my spirit sloughs
Repelled with a wielded stone
I await my sun-crowned prince
To wrap me in his embrace again
To live in gray instead of grave
Time is a construct
And yet I cannot build more
To replace that which was wasted
By a selfish plaguebearer
So I gaze at me from next to me
Features smooth and eroded
Desire to write rained out
By the selfish world I never asked to be part of.
It is not a fall,
A python sloughs its old skin and wears new look;
It is never a fall,
A snail finds splinter in its shell and changes its house;
Not a fall,
Wing-locust sheds its wing and becomes a queen;
A fall?
A child loses her cheese cutter for permanent ivory,
No, not a fall.
Great pheonix went to the nest to refeather,
They thought the immortal bird had fallen;
No,the golden bird lives,bristling up its new mane,
At the biggest internode of Araba tree;
The ageless bird crows, at the tallest branch of Iroko tree.
The lioness sleeps in the forest,
The flies of forest think the queen has fallen ,
And begin to mill around the sleeping giant buttock;
With what? With what shall the tamer of forest chase them away?
With tail! With tail the tamer of forest shall chase them away,
With tail.
The lioness sleeps in the forest
And the ants of the forest begin to mill around her ears;
With what? With what shall her majesty chase them away?
With wave! With wave shall her majesty chase them away,
With wave.
The lioness sleeps in forest
And the flies of forest begin to mill around her nose;
With what? With what shall her highness seize them?
With tongue! With tongue shall her highness seize them,
With tongue.
FOR LINDA AND SKAT
1ST DEC,2014
Why are the sea gulls shopping here,
if not for "White Stag, No Boundaries" or
"Faded Glory?" Is there some other story?
Coffee, tea, or you, or just practicing beach
and gray-sky calls over concrete, carts
and Handicapped Blue? This turf is for blackbirds
of the piercing cry, insolent strut and beady
stare. Not for you to straddle halogen
in your evening wear of dove-gray, black tie.
Not for you to play harlot in this car-lot
of no swells, no breakers.
What lures you, displaced gracefuls--calls
you from rides on a rogue wind, pushing lace-
topped tides to stock minnow meals
in pellucid sloughs? You've paid your dues,
and dour land birds are the parking lot denizens.
Surely you harbor an unnatural appetite
for hors de'oeuvres that do not swim
or paddle, though you buzz pedestrians
on stony reaches, as when dive-bombing
the deep or cruising the beaches.
For whatever draws you to the superstore,
super birds, I pray you reap Neptune's pardon
as you vie for the rail over the holy grail
of the Wal-Mart sign where no whitefish, black
fish, shrimp or snail, no fiddler crab scuttles
for safety. And, may our God absolve us
our sins of the past--our ever-advancing
tsunamis of concrete, steel, and glass.
Should I, mere a rabbit of sand, shiny hair,
sport a shock of fur mired in clay,
they from gofer mounds, propped on to peer, would sound warning
through the sun glades and sleep grotto shades.
“A pall fellow lights whereupon we here graze.
See ye lithely to him yield path.
He in bone pastel smocks with such likeness to bare
plodeth sloughs dank, decay’s fell morass.”
“This chap’s marks are slurred, kindred ‘s smudged,” they’ll say,
“in a mud that is not of our warren.
He looks sullied by drear earthen labyrinths far ‘way,
perhaps fox hole, cat hovel, or den of wolves’ coven.”
For when foul skies do strike, marring trees with their curses,
rains fall to douse scintillate branches.
A pungency hovers where a torrid sludge cools.
Its paste casts forbidden clan hues.
Now the wolf craves not easily his like or lean.
He is wary of ghouls in his ranks.
“Gaunt swagger, I see,” he’ll think,
“This one leave be, who with me, shares the gore and the grisly.”
For in drab sheens to drape, shall the countenance daunt.
Browns besmirched will, in ashes, urge, “Yay,
it is he colored wolf.” In airs Lupus, I’ll steep,
strutting meekness purged, brave in cloak gray.
Why are the sea gulls shopping here, if not
for "White Stag, "No Boundaries." or "Faded Glory?"
Is there some other story? Coffee, Tea or You,
or just practicing beach and gray-sky calls
over concrete, carts, and Handicapped Blue?
This turf is for blackbirds of the piercing cry, haughty
strut and beady stare. It's not for you to straddle
halogen in your evening wear of dove-gray, black
tie in this car-lot of no swells, no breakers.
What lures you displaced gracefuls-- calls you
from rides on a rogue wind, pushing lace-topped
tides to stock minnow meals in pellucid sloughs?
You've paid your dues, and dour land birds
are the parking lot denizens. Surely you harbor
a peculiar appetite for hors d'oeuvres that do not
swim or paddle, though you buzz pedestrians
on stony reaches as when dive-bombing
the deep, or cruising the beaches.
For whatever draws you to the superstore,
super birds, I pray you reap Neptune's
pardon as you vie for the rail over the holy grail
of the Wal-Mart sign, where no whitefish,
black fish, shrimp or snail, no fiddler crab
scuttles for safety. And may our God absolve
us our sins of the past-- our ever advancing
invasion of concrete, steel, and glass.
In the misty morning amid the elm and maple trees
The whiteness delicately floats above the ponds waterline
The night hunters abandon their night search for food
As the early morning rays peek through the woodland.
The morning brings the forest teeming to life
The occupants ready to attack their early morning feast
The vines and shrubs hiding them as they arch ready to attack
they scramble for their scrumpcious bite of food.
The geese, crows and magpies mingle around the water's edge
Looking for plants, seeds and aquatic animals to feed
Among the bull rushes and cattails on the sloughs edge
They mingle with the locals who come to drink.
Eating the wild berries for a tasty treat
Saskatoon, chokecherries, pin cherries ready to eat
Juicy and sweet, mild yet tart
Quite edible for a flock to feast.
This is a haven, a sanctuary for all
And as the balmy summer evening turns once again to dusk
The predators will come out with the evening shade
To stalk their prey among the woodland grove.