October gallops in as stolid as a gray mare,
a blunt wind snorts furiously through autumnal trees.
Foliage rattles, but does not fall, it clings still
to green stems.
Appalachian backwoods have tough roots,
shod as they are into an earth salted
with a dark gritty ore.
Bears are foraging and reaping,
their black silky pelts clamber over gusting winds
to reach the furthest fruits
before first snows overburden stoic pines.
Today the sky is unharnessed
and racing at full tilt
It whips my raw lips like a wet mane,
it rears up to stamp down upon its own
animated onslaught.
I adjust my rucksack and reshoulder a shotgun
grin, eyes watering
caught under the stampeding gale,
buffeted now by its muscular flanks.
I need to bridle this striding wind,
to halter its headlong charge,
or better yet just surrender -
turn my back on it,
let it ride me
as we leap down from the hilltops
whooping it up like cowboys.
When fire raged and burned it's roof, sun rays fell to forest floor,
And lit upon scraggly flowers once doomed to bloom no more.
Then unharnessed, like wild horses, the shrubs began to fight.
Each year they grew and blossomed, thanking sunshine for it's light.
The rains in spring brought forth rhodendendron's chromatic reds,
Near Redwood towering trunks 'bove where squirrels make their beds.
The rhodendendrons meander like hikers in the hills,
To startle round forest corners with blossoming pink thrills.
Kruse Rhodendendron State Natural Reserve is a park,
A California treasure, a pleasant trip to embark.
While hiking beneath the Redwood trees' scented canopy,
Enjoy this gift of land, enjoy the flowers wild and free.
"The wind is the pounding of my heart."
O heart just blow! Do not pound like a hungry hound!
Be breeze! Do not turn into wind and roughly bound!
When you're gentle, you're soothing and caressing bride,
Beauty-concentrated; blemish less; with no pride!
You're strong; beating too fast; Flip-flopping! Venturing;
Within, yet, placid breeze endlessly pestering;
Nature is the doctor, who can cure your illness.
She grants you implicit and explicit stillness...!
God has his vital plans. Who am I to resist?
Betwixt breeze and wind, what, exactly, is the tryst?
Before apathy sets in and rough outrages creep,
Shall we sow virtues and, for ever, blessings reap...?
"As yet, the wind is an untamed and unharnessed force"
13 August 2022
Let Your Muse Be Inspired - R Form Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Constance La France
SOMETIMES MOMENTS
because it was unplanned
filled the air untainted
music unharnessed
an unadulterated artistic release
life’s precious treasures
reminds
there’s always a path
a pure capture of ecstasy
one with easy recall
reminds us
moments
~armand
My dreams draw from roots of reality,
That grow unharnessed to myth and fantasy.
As they reach hidden heights of the ethereal,
Only to awaken with imagination carefully.
The journeys often lead to lands familiar,
Where joy is the flavor that I share.
And as long as I steer clear of my worst fears ...
I'll bravely avoid those resembling nightmares.
I miss the barn, the hay loft,
a place to listen to the midday sun
creaking through old wood.,
the small clouds of horse flies
moving as one in their jet-pack bodies,
that rose and fell
their small engines stuttering.
The humpbacked skeleton of a tractor
where goats built their castles,
the oily emptiness of its heart
as it clanked under their hooves
into a gearless life once more.
When the empty stalls echoed a warning
to the horses that no longer stabled there,
I would get up into the sagging rafters
where feather whiskered winds
rustled dust through broken boards,
It used to take them an hour
before they knew I was missing,
later they knew where to find me.
I miss the soul-deep smell
of dry leather tackle long unharnessed,
the empty cans of linseed and engine oil,
the old shotgun so rusted
it grew out of a dirt-caked bucket
as brown as a whittled flower stalk.
All gone, the barn, the farm house
and ‘they’ - gone now.
Yet sometimes they call to me
as I dream in a lullaby loft,
and I still a little disappointed
to be found.
Of the dark, offered in the morning cup,
and the chill of salted caramel cream,
spooning after an impervious dream
and clink-clink spell of alarum abrupt,
comes the ceramic to sip, birdsong up.
Fruity-caffeine drips into the bloodstream.
Imagery from a black forest daydream.
Pleasing sense and bonny sounds come to sup.
Draining of dregs, at last bit - bottom’s cold.
The Cupid sheet, vanilla, clings to spouse.
The warmth of my body under his skin.
The vigor of unharnessed dark horse bold.
His stirring, a second helping, aroused.
Pastels of cockcrow flutes, dawn’s violins.
vulnerable shoulders scantily clad
bare of protecting pauldron
without his strong arms encompassing
chest underdressed
short of a shield
without his beating breastplate pressing
helmet unharnessed
mind recklessly unleashed
without comforting thoughts of our melding
beaming brass unattached
sword unwielded for defense
strong arms to swing ~ missing
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
Chosen title: Defenseless
3/2/2020
Before the Roman legions carved a road
This stallion coursed across the chalk ridge brow
Unharnessed, free or by a king bestrode
Like wave traversing grassland free of plough
It still pursues its quest yet even now
Note: This is the oldest of the many white horses carved into chalk hillsides across southern England. It has been dated to The Bronze or Iron ages. (Pre-Roman occupation)
My cavern bursts with bittersweet aura
— like globose berries, a cluster of tints.
The secret place — its musk, amidst the flora,
a limited conquest of feet — their prints.
Excitement rocks — I wade in hidden space.
My helmet light — it swims above my eyes.
The shadows wet, the adventurous ace.
The winding walls will never brush the skies.
The natural deep dark, unharnessed hush.
Us tourists kneel — the prayer within the calm.
The stalactite and stalagmite - time’s crush.
The pleasing whim — underground cave a psalm.
In seven hours se la explora.
My cavern bursts with bittersweet aura
6/7/2019
Nature Scene-Orphan Sonnet Poetry Contest
Sponsor - Dale Gregory Cozart
se la explora - it is explored
Poetry is different
when spoken than read
The words more musical
outside my head
No longer imprisoned
or held on the page
Their freedom unharnessed
—the voice of an age
(Villanova Pennsylvania: April, 2015)
Cattle trucks drive highways now
where drovers once held sway
Heavy rigs of chrome and steel
replaced the horse and dray
Gravel tracks of rich red earth
that rambled near and far
Have disappeared forever
‘neath miles of hot black tar
The billabong by shady gums
stands empty cracked and dry
The thirst of modern farms it seems
lets river systems die
The campfires of the cattle men
that used to dot the plains
No longer flicker in the night
no sign of them remains
Bush ballads sing of sweeping plains
where brumbys still run free
Of wild unharnessed rivers
and clear inviting seas
But brumbys fall as feral pests
the rivers drained and dry
The sea is choked with sewage
where fish and sea grass die
As the romance of the outback
begins to fade away
We learn that progress has a price
we’ve all been forced to pay.
From my PDF book "Bush Ballads and Bulldust"
When is physical restraint equipment
also dirty laundry?
When your daughter vomits
all over her school bus transport harness,
When she could have more safely,
and less expensively, traveled
in a six-seat van
with her contenting seat belt on
Rather than shackled to her seat
and unshackled into her school
Where all unharnessed big girls and boys
hierarchically go
to not air their dirty laundry.
The restless breeze moves
rapidly through the grasslands,
like a rippling sea of waves.
Flocks of birds draft one
another as they cascade
through windswept, cloudy skies.
Whipping winds move hastily
across the ocean waters,
as sailors fill their sails
and pick up speed.
Trees sway and bend as
their leaves pull away and
swirl in a downward spiral
to the earth below.
Moody skies transform
gentle breezes into
windstorms in the span
of a early afternoon.
A veritable force of nature,
the power of the winds
can change the canvas of a
landscape in an instant.
Like time that passes with
relentless fervor,
the winds of change
march boldly onward,
unrestrained and unharnessed.
Written on 3/22/2015
A school teacher named Miss Shaw
Though well-endowed wore no bra.
Things slipped and jiggled
Bounced and wiggled
Pupils are still awed by what they saw.
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