Beside the placid waters of the Rhone
A classical village rises to meet the sky,
The magnificent steeple an inverted cone
Hoists a Saint Anthony’s cross to passersby.
The placid waters of the Rhone reflect
Tightly crowded flats along the banks
While gondola-like barges quietly bisect,
Creep behind a steamer in solemn ranks.
Beyond the placid waters of the Rhone
Behind where the hamlet cannot expand
Where artist has never dimensionally gone
Are meadows and fertile stretches of land.
Above the placid waters of the Rhone
And the village so central to this scene
A cerulean sky lends a peaceful overtone
With wispy clouds, a sight not often seen.
Published in PS: It's Poetry
Anthology of Poetry Soup
Arczis Web Technologies, Inc., 2020
Chosen as a FIRST PAGE PICK
All Poetry Website
July 25, 2021
Over the Rhone,
web of light sewn;
eyes of night’s wonder,
God’s own plunder.
Reflections mirror
the heaven’s splendor.
A magical river,
love it delivers.
A walk on the banks,
amid glowing ranks;
romantic attractions,
vibrant abstractions.
Vincent’s emotions,
magnificent potions.
Vibrant allure,
a must to procure.
Fierce Arctic blasts were but things of my past
Once I found romance in the south of France.
How could she entrance with one simple glance?
My lonely love fast was over at last.
No longer alone with wine of the Rhone
We shared fresh claret at the Blue Parrot,
Love, I declared it, for her hair carrot
With its golden tone banded with opal stone.
We traveled to Nice to visit my niece
At the Eden Roc and enjoyed sweet talk;
The sand shore we’d walk and watch sailors caulk.
Our joy had to cease when came the police.
I'd made my exit, a jailbird Brexit,
From a Finnish cell much too cold to tell.
It was love’s death knell as law tracked me well.
To be explicit, Finns caught this nitwit.
It is Arctic cold where I will grow old
My crimes to atone ‘til I’m skin and bone.
My heart lives alone with dreams of the Rhone
Where claret is sold; and your hand I hold.
1/30/2019
Somewhere on the Rhine
or the Rhone
a harmonica,
Hohner,
plays a sad tune underneath a
watery moon or
is that the tears in my eyes?
ART Vincent Van Gogh
An Afinity of Yellow
The moon is slowly engaging the afternoon sun
and the crows fly randomly o’er the fields
where wheatfields bloom with hues
of radiant energy and bright patches
of yellow imitating the sun
and Vincent, the Artist applies on the canvas
a black stroke here and a black stroke there
before the crows disperse and disappear
his Wheatfields with Crows he would create
he steps back to observe but his mind
is uneasy his affinity for the bright color yellow
is enhancing his depressed manic state
and he must strife for completion
before it’s too late for his mind and his soul
will be lost to his inevitable fate
but the Van Gogh legend must carry on
that he must fall and rise again
to seek out the night and to paint the stars
by the river Rhone
then repose himself at the Night Cafe
an absinthe to create a sensation
of a light burning bright in his brain
to paint on the morrow and borrow
what goodness will come his way
but the days grow short he can only hope
for a promising sign that he can cope
Celebration of Art Contest
Sponsored by Kim Rodrigues
April 28, 2017
Look what you have left us, Vincent van Gogh
Found hiding under your tormented mind
A vision of your Starry Night in Rhone
The Night Cafe' was revenge of a kind
At Eternity's Gate one sits and cries
But I reside in A Poet's Garden
Thirty seven years of visions disguised
You turned from God as your heart hardened
In suffering your gift was your pardon
At night I sit in your Cafe' Terrace
And contemplate the dreams you starred in
The Self Portrait you painted in Paris
Thank you for the chance to let us all see
Your brilliant visionary ecstasy
an original poem by the "poemdog" Daniel Turner
Spenserian Sonnet abab bcbc cdcd ee
Her tractor beam eyes draw me near,
Eyes with the ability, allowing men to leer;
A lowered bridge, allowing people to cross,
Across the wood and the moss;
Seeing her again, to me what matters most,
Where ever she may be, inland or by the coast;
Feelings for her, within me I own,
Sipping wine, along the river Rhone;
Drawing on my experience to further understand the likes of you,
Leaves me not knowing about the complexities you do;
Which clearly explains you're far too deep to understand,
Even when our time is very well planned;
When the time has come and I can no longer solicit,
Not even one morsel, not even one bit;
When things begin to go awry,
The only thing left for me to do is die.
6-3-13
The Beautiful Wind
I’ve journeyed far across the plain
I’ve searched around the world in vain.
I’ve seen sails billow o’er the sea
and yet you always hide from me.
I think upon that mistral chill
as I stood looking down the hill
reflecting o’er the mighty Rhone
how close, and yet so far, we’d grown.
I’ve chased you in your wanderlust
I followed the eluvium dust
and heard your howling cries at night
yet never held you in my sight.
When I draw near, away you hurry
and once or twice I’ve felt your fury
but how I love your gentle side…
so many times my tears you’ve dried.
I won’t accept that I am wrong
as I watch clouds dance to your song
and hear grass swaying to the tune
just love me back, you big buffoon.
It drives me mad, that much is true
that I can’t lay my eyes on you.
O blower, blower of the vane
Think not that I have gone insane.
I’ll chase you ‘til my final breath
and then perhaps we’ll meet in death
where in the heavens I shall find
you are ugly...ummm
...never mind.
08/29/15
Entwined in a lovers sweat
Passions sated, as a cool breeze
Brings in the scent of the night
Tongues tasting of wine, fully satisfied
Eternal happiness, could this be?
Or should I run under gloomy tormented skies?
Hand in hand we traveled, across the fields of love
Into historié
Sur le pont d’Avignon
We danced the night away
Round and round did we go
Our love fell into the Rhone
Devotion seemed a certainty
Love was passions muse
Broken, life fell in the abscess of my demise
All I truly desired, left sur le pont
The battle of Avignon left me defeated
As my memories fade, melancholy recalls to me
The kiss that never was
Meant to last
Searching in the night for the springs of Rhone
the asphalt embraces the stone like a snake.
"It is the only way"
said to me William Tell
at the gas station of Saint Alpine.
And when mountains stood up all around,
when we were surrounded by dark forests
and the dawn seemed to be totally lost,
you showed me your body under the starlight.
Fire and sweat gushed
from the springs of desire.
Signals of oblivion
from the wells of fear.
Love is a disease of the mind.
It gives a touch to illusions.
It makes bodies shiver.
It makes dreams bleed.
And loneliness to creak the stairs at midnight
and terrorise us.
Pledge your eyes to the lake of Geneva,
your laughter to the fireworks.
When your nights become endless
you will have me to remember.
Wine
is fine
when I dine.
Some in the stein
can be very fine.
It is time to resign
when I can’t walk a straight line.
It comes from the Rhone or the Rhine.
The California stuff is most fine.
Every weekend,
ready to relax,
I go fishing with a friend
The is barely no catch
But I admire her company
Sharing stories, we sail
Night falls and we return
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/509/Starry-Night-Over-the-Rhone.html
Feats of courage and the heroic death
For the cause country or the desert zones
Peeping voices low under old stony buildings
In wake of the retreating armies of the Rhone.
On the hill an impregnable fortress
On the ground a mound of hay and mud
The battering of bats against the windows
In ruins destroyed by the war of mammon.
Give us a change of seasons
A little pause of breath after the sunrise
Two and two along bundled hay stacks
An undamaged barn along the ground.
Looking across the high window there is
A landscape stretching across the fields
But the internal bonds of prison keep tying
The gaze inwards towards the shields
Facing the demigods of death and destruction
Muzzled up rifles wolf dogs punitive camps
In the verse a demolition a smouldering ash
To counteract the poisons of the times.
Would not I carry my rugged pride
When element to element will mingle and reside
In perfumed consummation of interstellar space
In a new planet cast out of Brahama’s rage
For ever wishing my nibbled pen could trace
A line of haughty verse to silence the deadly state
The world’s affairs And all its cloud clapped might
But ends in poor surrender shorn of man’s pride
Shorn of all honour when our tattered rags do show
The imprints of tempters all their dishonest row
Then we hate to touch our mortgaged flesh and bone
When souls are slaughtered in church yards of rhone
It might have been better to explore salient venues
The spirit of dark waters or some sealed avenues.