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Best Poems Written by R. H. White

Below are the all-time best R. H. White poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | R. H. White Poem

A Gaelic Song

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			A Gealic Song

Gneiss. 
	Ancient.
Vying with Earth herself for the Crown of Age.

In the Hebrides
Lie the Stones of Calanais
Stubborn chthonic deities of a common past
Rising up and standing against all.
You
More than a beautiful metaphor 
Of what I have seen forged in that deep, deep heart;
A heart deep as the songs of Burns on thistle
Or lilting starlings in murmuration ---
Fluid patterns emerging and re-forming.
Such speed at odds with those silent Stones
The Stones of Calanais
The monuments to time
Birthed in an altogether different aeon
Which presaged your very strength
In adumbrated timelessness...
 Burnished equipoise in the craftsman's hand.

I cannot move thee
But I can embrace thee
My Gaelic love---
The strength of woman is you
The gift of love you gave
Sits in me like those magic Stones
Rising from our mutual earth
Stretching towards infinite stars.

Details | R. H. White Poem

White Sands and Temporary Oblivion



White Sand and Temporary Oblivion

For an aching moment
I faced dazzling
Gypsum and glass as splinters
Of sunlight pierced the air
Bouncing bright off the landscape at
Alamogordo ---fat Cottonwoods and
	not a tree in sight not
Here, the sight of the unholy Trinity 
	test
Blessed and blast
A fitting slant rhyme for our
	slanted 
times
	askew at
1700 Silica Avenue in a decidedly
	different Manhattan where no
Dandy boulevardier would dare strut.

Castle Bravo likewise
No place to dwell as we
Did our best
	to incinerate the century
Trolling for a toll in the ashes of the atoll.
No sufficient payment was made.

But all that brightness
	those purblind moments flirting
With nothingness all
	retreated
Like genie to bottle 
Heard whispering,
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds..."

Certain whispers linger
Portending brighter, more permanent
Non-being; so be it.

Details | R. H. White Poem

Lux Nova

^b^
				Lux Nova
			(after Notre Dame)

The light at Suger's
	 St. Denis
precursor for mighty Notre Dame
Paints both floors in color.
Transliterated from the glass of guilds
	Tracery and mullions 
Adumbrate
A story in late winter's light
Perhaps enough, barely enough
	Enough of an outline...

Still, colors bleed
Onto freshly scrubbed floors and
Sing in their own tongue.
A washbucket stands idle
Utensils erect and attentive
Listening for
A song sung to eyes, not ears 
And that is what some call magic
For others
	Inspiration...
To all
The lux nova.

I too have heard whispered prayers
Hushed reverence, suspirations of hope...
Nascent long ago
Even in the empty house
So still, so full of light.

Stone and the Areopagite
	Make the stuff of building ---
But neo-Platonic rhythm on strings
Sound the noumenal 
	now real and
Find the unwinding of the literal
Amid limpid traces
Of flesh, reaching spirit 
Like incensed smoke-trails
Seeking height.

Censers disgorge aspirations
	History disgorges bodies and
	fire destroys beauty.
Climbing inchoate dactyls
Finger the new braille
Of the new light...

Lux Nova
	Noli me tangere...
And so it is ---
Light remains ineffable in its 
Own incarnation...
 One can re-build stone and timber
	the rest
Resides inside...
^b^

Details | R. H. White Poem

The Selfish Knight and His Lady



	The Selfish Knight and His Lady

Sixteen pieces for me
	Allotted the same for you
But, it always begins with Me first
Unless the 'me' is you...
Whereupon, like Alice in her checkerboard world,
It's up to me to find our way.
	It's up to you 
To find my way...

I have been both pawn and knight
	(never bishop nor king)
And our Queen moves so many ways
She never fails to make me spin.
"Capture the Queen, 
	Capture the Queen..."
I hear the forever cry
Emanating from the bishops
Holed up in their towers...
Chanting fealty and Romance
Singing of lady-love and noble favors
As I plod forward, a foot-soldier,
Or jump in frenzied el 
The maniacal knight
	An endless quest...

For her turn
	(Your turn, that is, my Lady)
Comportment and Courtly manners
To match Courtly silks and tresses
Follow you in  saffron mornings
All through glades of twayblade and cocksfeet;
Ever gathering, ever in the light
	While light be present...
'Til evening's soft glow
Guides you home.

Took  long years for one mortal
To build a pointed arch.
Arms extended
Through other arms
And tokens and chivalry pristine,
 To your lofty heart.

But you removed the keystone
And that house of worship fell.
Unlike Samson in Gaza
Yours was no righteous strength
But some preternatural power
Summoned forth from within.
	Sui generis
An altogether different vacuum-genesis
As lightning came from a dark, deconsecrated space
Not creation, but Her black twin.
As it was, so I deserved.

So here we are
Moveable pieces of glass cliché,
Infidels to the universe of Good
Imprisoned on a board
Within a game 
Of skill, a game
	within mirrors, a game
Within infinite possibility and paradox
Moved by, after all, an unknown hand.
And still, after all that, it is my fault.

We all learn that
Glass pieces, when struck,
	By light, or love, or luck
Make fine parade of color 
But cast no shadow.
Well, not 
	The hollow ones fashioned like you,
The one imprisoned my soul,
Turned prism opaque,
	Forced the flight of radiant light...

But,  fine pieces they do chip, 
Or splinter,
	Or break.
That's why they move
When someone shouts,
	"Off with her head!"
So it is, after all
This fear which motivates ...
And dispatches all.

Details | R. H. White Poem

La Isla Del Encanto



La Isla del Encanto
			   (El Poema del Linda)

There was no Elizabethan
Changing of eyes
On the Isle of Enchantment;
No sudden moment of charm or bewilderment.
Rather, came a delicate awakening
Like soft dawn rising over groves
Redolent of plantain and nectar.

The Linden tree calls her
	Soft and tender
So too a neo-Latin name for
	Beauty
 As she was
	Ever 
Native to islands
Born from sea spray
A soft mystery to be read,
Explored, and never concluded...

And now I see it
So absolutely like
The shawl settled 
Across her shoulders
Lifting in the breeze
Ushered in by grace. 

As such,
She wandered to my bed where
	Passion can burn in one candescent night.
But where love 
	Is a different calendar.
Not precise and never numbered...

Indeed, ahead unfold
A concatenation of days
Accruing as a mausoleum of memory
Where gentle spirits lay forever
Eschewing sleep in favor
Of allowing auras to seep into
	And inform
The ever-expanding present, 
	Of an interlocking reverie.

Slow growth, 
	delicate and steady...
Becoming more entwined 
The moment fingers locked
And we ascend towards bloom.

A lattice made from mutual mistakes
Holds up, defiant ---
Lends skeletal strength
While mapping the body of
One ardent dream.

And what soft lumen roused me
From my torpid slumber
Waking me to lilt of sea-song?

Aurora's nascent dactyls 
Inched up horizon line
Ascending like aspiring wisps of hope
Spreading warmth unnoticed 
Until, by zenith
All shall be bright and clear
Where we share a common tongue
But speak a deeper language
Not private, but privileged.
Granted only those who move
Beyond number and word
To caress contradiction
Embrace the ineffable
Partake of the fabulous Dane's 
Mystic leap of faith.

If this be the reward to come
	In learning from the past
Then let me, please 
	Mistake no more...

Details | R. H. White Poem

The Secret of Emotional Mist




The Secret of Emotional Mist

Evincing nothing, she remained mute
To nuanced intimations of intimacy.
There was nothing left to conclude but that
The greatest prison is boredom,
The greatest torture --- betrayal.

Thus we parted in the concrete now
Leaving behind that nebulous separation
We had shared almost as if a secret,
	Venturing towards precious.

Just as an ill-fashioned keystone
can splinter upon contact if
timing is precise...
Why is it that Time seems to know just
When to strike?
Always. 
Leads me to believe
That if Time is not anthropomorphic
 	it is nonetheless prescient
No. That can't be right...
Time predates and outlives all
(has already outlived us all).
Romantics claim other yet I
Dare gainsay them each and every

Spirit can be broken 
	like glass
Love become mere bagatelle,
Children, still tuned to magic,
laugh at us as we follow our own
Shades to the underworld of
Wonderment and wonder
	How did I ever believe
The intangible was not frangible?

Details | R. H. White Poem

Moonlight and Plankton In the Aegean

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Moonlight and Plankton in the Aegean



Near a beach in Amorgos
Kycladic moonlight
	lilting off
Aegean 
	waters illuminate 
the breasts of two young girls and
Plankton playing off back-lit silhouettes...

Our ketch undulates according to
The laws of Poseidon
While youthful want-to-be mermaids
Frolic and scatter bio-luminescent
	diamonds with every move.

Pause to breathe in the salt air of night
	preparing for tomorrow when
We trek to Hozoviotissa to speak to
Monks who cannot
Admit my female passengers.
Mine are still
Young enough not to care why
My friend and I seek monastic counsel.
Not to join those men but to gather...

By contrast the young women
	feel no sting from banned admittance
to the house of ancient, holy order;
Question aloud why my friend and I
	would ever seek stars
Beyond the ones seen now
Painted on water
Pinned to velvet sky
Floating on the Aegean
Beautiful beings all...

Candlelight falls upon
the eyes of monks and those
	of young beauty.
There is mystery to be explored in both and
As captain of my own vessel
I shall continue to search;
	sail behind the eyes of
Holy mystery and divine rays of youth.

Sextant drawn
Stars, horizon lines in sight as
After tomorrow
	on to Kos
Octopus and sponge drying in the Sun
Which has no measure.

^

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Modern Times



Modern Times

Universal truths or Universal Studios?
Can one distinguish any longer now
That the Universe has shrunk to a
Binary system of code,
Arcane enough to keep most believing
In a higher power, that is
	until
Brown-out causes
Questioning 
	albeit fleeting like light, like
fliker of a dying cathode ray
	the modern equivalent of firefly,
A sad beacon warning of troubled seas, yet
We sail forth steadfast in ignorance
	gaining
no truths just
making sure the water stays murky enough
for the ensuing generation of questions.

We never listen.

I love the motion pictures and
We need some Chaplin now.
His modern times guttered out 
Like a heavy candle in a Trappist's window
	too as
Charlot became Godot and yes,
I stay rooted in that century
Where pilgrimage did not lead to Progress
but morass which
	----we should all fear---
congeals like treacle every year
Cloying and suffocating in its sweet enough promise
To tempt the waiting generation yet, to suckle,
Purchase into the myth
Enjoy overpaying for the cheap seats
While the projectionist is
	asleep at the wheel
reel to real to reel...

Adieu my century
	Welcome to the next phase of blind.

Details | R. H. White Poem

Gleaned In the Smokey Mountains

^b^
Gleaned in the Smokey Mountains

A splash of white paint, just where you sleep
that's what the Wise-blood Naomi advised.
I remember her hair so thin it looked
	like ham gravy running down her forehead.
"No need for Passover blood. Not here.
	Not in these hills. Here,
The spirits have a diferent master."

Dutifully, we obeyed yet
that night, just before the gloaming,
	blood dripped from above.
Atomized droplets misting from the ceiling, 
	evincing a hidden chamber above?

My elders gathered us 
	in a hush, 
we could not know 
	to what or whom to pray
Lighting through now morning mist
We hastened for the bright of day.

See, childhood holds such unbalanced dreams
My parents gone; no trace of any shaman.
Still, inscribed in me ever lies
A shuddering before things unseen
	perhaps obscene
Things I sense are never
To be gleaned.

Grain may be gleaned as
In that painting by Millet;
Barbizon School, yet how
Was I to learn to distinguish seed from bract
Matthew from Ruth separate
As I am in an different century
	on a different continent?
Am I to walk as Odysseus to a land which
Knows not of sea. 
Have them mistake my oar
	for winnowing fan?
Can things ever be what they seem?

I see them still and know
They are not there; yet, 
Formed amid blood-spray and youth 
	it remains difficult
To suss the saved from the damned
	the seen from unseen since

Witching was my midwife... 

^b^

Details | R. H. White Poem

Gentle Egg



Gentle Egg


She candled an egg in her soft hands
	protecting the fragile, 
inspecting with light;
Cusping 
Like either horn
Of a crescent moon
When floated aloft on two 
	dexterous 
		fingers.

Was she not peering into the future?
Making a determination perhaps
Even listening,
Searching for signs
	of life?
or something more mundane ---

Broken vessels
Spots of blood
promising rot ...

Yolkers
	like me...