Of which country, sunset-lit
Eventide, out west
All that is native to it
Moveless, soundless are.
Age'd, withered, like unto
These folk, parkland benched?
"Insofar as shows we two
For tawny frogmouth
Perched a dead branch, camouflaged!
With grump's stare, afar".
IMPROMPTU
Her wordless lips
Seemed destined to say,
Yes, I’m the one.
My moveless eyes
Tried to hide my inchoate question,
Are you the one?
In a spontaneous reply
To an unasked question,
The loveliest face
I had ever seen
Turned to meet my gaze.
Our souls felt the warm
Spotlight of magnetism
Irresistibly drawing us
27 August 2021
Once I was a preserver
a wayfarer
a maker
but later
you turned me into a useless stargazer
by losing the will of being your tracer
I ceded my kismet on becoming an engraver
I grew to be nothing but a moveless eraser
NOT QUITE MORNING
Early tide not quite
Out, slowly withdrawing
Just enough water to slop around
Jellyfish and mud ripples.
Too deep to walk. Shoes
Uncertainly gripping a shallow sand bar.
A watery beach can ooze
Loneliness : grey sky not quite filled with
Wetness.
Windless, moveless clouds, flat horizon,
Unclearly drawn dawn.
....................................................
MOVING HOUSE
Everyone gone.
Scattered long-lost yellow photos, outdated tickets,
Carpet hollows where furniture stood,
Are the only traces.
End of the world we knew -
Walls scorched with sun-faded outlines of pictures,
Curtainless windows glare - intense heat
From the staring sun
In the empty sky,
Dust beams across moveless clouds of motes.
In remote corners dead spiders with their
Forgotten, mummified flies.
Cockroaches are king, moving over vacant floors,
Silent in the voiceless void.
OTHER WORLD
When I think back to Ellen -
Long forgotten by relatives or acquaintances -
Through my mind book,
Peeling back the layers
Of dead people’s memories,
People pleading to be remembered
To be partly immortal,
I think maybe I am the only one to have
Disturbed her, asleep so long in that other world:
For she is still, not dead,
As long as I remember her.
In moveless crowds they lie, waiting,
Waiting as if for a ship,
Which may never dock beside them,
But still they wait.
And when I disturb her, or another beside,
They crowd around to listen to the conversation
From the other world,
Where people still remember.
Each hopes to be disturbed some day
By a memory gleaned
From the layers peeled back in a mind book,
Or by the arrival of the ship.
JANUARY SUNRISE
Over frozen Neva, the slowly flowing *
Sun came up, big, oval and orange - glowing
Off the ice-bound water bright, showing
How, after the dark days of December’s night -
That warmless, brightless hopeless sight -
We could feel alive and thankful in the sunlight.
An icebreaker shoved its way briskly through
The moveless channel, enveloping itself in a hue
Of misty water and ice fragments blue.
Then the river fell rigid and still again
As we wished and sought the sun’s domain
On our chilled cheeks; but we gazed in vain
Over the frozen Neva - as Franklin in distress *
Must have peered endless
Through the frigid night of Boothia’s wilderness.
With the channel shimmering, misty rainbows
Purified the air. We took the offered dose
And thankful filled our lungs as the sun arose.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*The River Neva is the main waterway in St. Petersburg, Russia
*Lord Franklin died in 1845 exploring the Northwest
Passage near the Boothia Peninsula, Canada
THE FALL OF PEACE
Quiet peace - moveless fish a-bubble,
Birds’ soft-lifted skyward treble.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Entered in John Freeman’s Contest “Crystalline Euphony”
IN THE 3-D MOVIE THEATRE
In the thick warm darkness
Like rows of fishes moveless
Netted on the bottom of the black seas
Trapped in red velvet seats flipping down with ease
And fighting for elbow room lest
We lose our place on the arm rest
In mouthopen awe at the screen bright
Making seeming day from our night
Until the moment of freedom
Seat flipping will clear the net’s thralldom
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..
Anyone who has seen the photos of vast 3-D cinema audiences
in the 1950 s wearing the paper eyeglasses will know
what this poem is about.
Frozen time sands of crispy interval,
Felt by every walking voyage underfoot.
Moveless waves showing compassion remoteness,
Never moving the minute hand,
Leaving lips of hour-glass speechless.
Breezy chill jaunting the moment of one,
Season freeze for the life remaining.
Refusing stormy weather spells of relationship,
Keeping the distance alive to live.
No rain check,
Passed by,
Giving up before ever knowing,
What truly missed in brief pain,
Otherside dazzling soul joy.
Heart broken journeying,
Refusing to experience,
Always speaking thought emptiness of what never traveled by spirit guide.
Graveyard residence,
Living life with the dead-
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