145.
My 29th Leaf
Picked thee head level
From bamboo bundle
Beside eight of us
It's sort of wild grass
Behold this “Chinese Bamboo!”
As Ante Bing said
By them it's planted
Capuso family
The owner of thee
I'm with 6 batchmates
Twenty-third of June
Sky's speaking a rune
Nimbus were coming
Was about raining
About 3 PM
Beside a dam deep
Wherein no one should creep
It's an upland
Metres from farmland
In Aglalana
Tolada active
For month elusive
But need not be tired
If moment inspired
Batchmates rebonding.
-06/23/2012
(Dumarao)
*My Toladas Collection
This time of the year again
She has gone shopping for gifts to give the young
she would not take me along, knows I would be grumpy
and sarcastic and impatient.
I sat on the plaza with a glass of Chianti, not because I like this wine but because it is the only Italian name I could think of,
A mist of people around me, a crescendo of voices
talking about about a topic they agreed upon, Noel
I unfold the paper “Stalemate in Gaza.”
It does not ring a bell for the consumers, in the thrall of the glittering street decoration, fake snow, and humbug
We have been invited to a restaurant so grand waiters
dress like diplomats, call out your name when entering
Our esteemed Senor Hansen from Sweden at table number 12. What! I am not Swedish but never mind
I will get revenge when asking for Alentejo Red Wine
When we come back to the Algarve, it can be cold
in January, a man will come from the upland with a truck
of firewood, ready cut and dry.
The only sound we will hear during the festivities are
are the bleating of the lamb
The Walker
Sometimes, there is a sense that the road doesn't
roll out further, there is no vista of a highland or a slow-running river of sweet water to lazily swim
while remembering Marilyn in Lazaro's jewelry shop, a dream so vivid, not dim, as the years roll by.
It is time to take the boots out of the cupboard try them on, and feel how they make your feet walk
Travel light, a rucksack will do, and a solid walking stick to fend off dogs.
The upland has no rain, although it might shower
on the way there; at night, you can seek shelter
in an empty bear lair and sleep well till the thrush
says it is time to walk on if you want to find the place you know is there, over the horizon
In the dulcet knowledge of the longer one walks
the younger one feels.
Coastal ghosts
Out of the foam
when a mighty wave crashed ashore
came a pair of transparent
horses
flying mane of course
They were last seen
galloping
upland where the mist
was settling for the evening
Coastal ghosts
Out of the foam
when a mighty wave crashed ashore
came a pair of transparent
horses
flying mane of course
They were last seen
galloping
upland where the mist
was settling for the evening
The hills are running with deer
and there are sunlit roads in the sky.
Fresh and wide-eyed is the wind,
it swirls like a dervish dancer.
Its good that I have this ghost-dog
to lick my hand. I send her away
to hunt the grass-haunting rabbits.
In the end, the old girl had few teeth
and bad breath,
but now she pants and smiles
with glittering stars in her sweet pink mouth.
As for me I am alive! I am a footprint
so light upon this green earth
that my very presence enlivens the turf,
and rocks.
Old ghost-dog is young again, she barks
at the swift flying birds but only I
see or hear her.
This upland trail
might wander away into history soon,
fade away
like a long forgotten Cherokee path,
even tomorrow
it might not still be here, or even I
not be seen - anywhere.
My Love, how she laughs!
And brims with delight
As she breezes along
The sun in her lap –
A glittering pose
Becomes her, just so
In her whimsical hues
And idling flows
And when she sighs
And shifts on the sand
Aglow in the night
The moon in her eyes –
‘Tis all I can stand
Myself, but a man
Drenched with a thirst
Alone – and upland
And when she cries
And weeps in the rain
Oh, that I!
Could take her away
To fields where we lay
And lessen her pain –
And when she roars!
And leaps – mighty leaps!
Her passions – asleep
Awake from the deep
To settle the score
That all lovers keep
Of madness and lore
Of legends and more
That leap – as she leaps
And roar – as she roars!
An upland valley
where sunlight runs upon rippling grasses.
Spirit, dressed in motley camouflage,
pirouettes, scanning dark cliff tops,
its light quickened by the press.
of looming shadows.
On the narrowing pathways
of a sky-lit vale
a clambering heart dares to climb
the high vine of being.
Dark nights have long burnished
an armor of discipline.
The dancer in the warrior
leaves the open glen
reaching toward the penumbra of death
its eternal life
elated by a high-stepping conviction
that reveals spacious green acres
already spreading above.
I watch fascinated
at its teetering stance,
bobbing up and down,
picking at small insects
that infest the lonely loch,
that it chooses instead of
upland streams or creeks
or fast-flowing rivers,
or in some lonely lake.
Today I sit on a small chair,
behind some bushes on the shore
of a lonely loch, away from it all.
Ah sandpiper, are you emulating me?
Are you in search of lonely spots too,
far from the worrisome cities of the world?
Let's leave behind us wars and strife,
enjoy a bit of peace. Let us be true to love.
A breeze strikes, up and up you fly,
with stiff bowed brown wings
and your characteristic cry,
swee-wee-wee, swee-wee-wee.
Where will you go for shelter?
Do you prefer the secluded estuaries
or the protected inland lakes?
I see you return, too good a place to miss.
But look, you've found a mate.
Heaven provides, love conquers all.
I think I'll turn in, my wife awaits.
Nestled woodland, leaves on line,
thick, straight, and curving.
Mounded upland, forms eternal,
Rounded, angled, and yielding.
Circled valley, meadows, fields,
shapes, and pathways winding.
Seasons quartered, warm and cool,
rust and mustards flying.
Upward outward, textured daybreak,
quiet breezes low:
Close encounter, canvas earth,
to view, to feel, to grow.
Dry river mystery
The river in the domestic landscape was not as big
as it used to be, for years, the rain upland fell sparsely
when the hot summer came, the river dried up.
The river bed was eerily white with a massive overhang
spikey plants as a scar of lumpy skin after heart surgery.
Of the farmer’s four children, three liked to play
in this mysterious scenery of skull-like rocks, when lifted
had pockets of water like there was a hidden stream
under the bed, the fourth child had an instinctive fear
of the dry river’s strangeness and kept away.
When the summer was over, rain of epic proportion
came to the mountain where the river’s nascent began.
Suddenly a wall of water ran faster than a train
drowning all in its rouse to meet the sea.
The farmer whose wife had died when giving birth
to the fourth child was devasted, those will lose
tongues blamed him for being thoughtless.
Of the surviving child, nothing is known, fading away
as never born.
The past is a thought.
The coastal fishing town in Peru was charming
its upland was bare and light brown, with roads
looking like scars caused by a triple Bye-Pass.
The sky was enormous, the biggest ever seen
but was unmotivated, not a cloud around.
Teresa is a short, lovely woman in well-filled jeans.
Ah, jeans, one wishes for the skirt’s reappearance.
We hired a car and drove up the bare hills.
The driest of landscapes weighted down by dust
Tiny villages, four houses and a cantina, not a place
for the young, Lima was their dream.
At the top of a hill, we stopped, and afar the Pacific
glittering green living up to its name.
We were in love, the transient kind disappearing
in the morning light; told each other lies and enjoyed
the sweetness of dreams.
We drove back before darkness, the road narrow.
Teresa worked at night, with many trawlers docking.
A stolen moment by two people whose youth had
passed us by, but we remember how sweet it was.
Snatching
straws
falling
tilting
precariously
through
notice
toward
doom
inverted
caricatures
of
marionettes
shine
& community
supports
& grips
divine
stumbling
wild
madness
shaking out
clean
time
& its
witness
upland
coarse.
Written: July 03, 2022
A Brian Strand Premiere Choice Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
NOTE:THIS IS AN OPEN(organic) FORM VERSE using spaces&breaks without grammatical symbols ,the ' open' relies upon 'the one breath limitation' & so inherently requires the 'reader' (reciter) to input and responds thus making this enigmatic form a two way interplay & interpretatIon unique to the moment& changing according to mood is inherently variable.
Autumn light
Softly they walk on a day in October
The old man and sunlight among olive trees
Planted when his grandfather was young.
On the track hove marks from sheep
That walk here daily on the way home
After grazing upland.
Bits of fleece on thorny bushes
Black pellets and the pungent aroma
Of the woolly-backed still lingers.
He sees the old cottage, warped roof
And bushes grow through the floor
He doesn’t stop; it was all so long ago.
Light is fading time, to leave for him
Autumn evening evenings can be chilly
Not so good for his chest.
Trapped
My life is in three parts
30, years as a seaman until it became unbearable.
30 good years in the deep hinterland
a place of contemplations and trying to write,
walking with my dog in the woods, there was so much to see.
I feel imprisoned.
My house is sold, I have nowhere to go.
Living in a building of snobs who rather wait for an elevator
when the transport lift is free.
Surrounded by nice middle-class housing and planted trees.
My years at sea is no longer obtainable, my life in the upland was a dream
And here I live inside a nightmare of all I dislike.
The worst thing that can happen to any man has happened to me
The loss of the future.
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