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Best Poems Written by Vol Lindsey

Below are the all-time best Vol Lindsey poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Amarillo

At six o’clock the road turned bare
as we rode through Tennessee.
From Nashville to Memphis is a long,
dark stretch of gray and brown trees
and fields where no one ever walks or works.
I’ve often wondered who owns those empty spaces.

The rains kicked up and splattered the windshield 
with drops as big as plums, ten seconds at a time, 
then dry a while before starting all over again.
For hours and miles, nothing changed
past Memphis, Little Rock, and Fort Smith,
until the sun came up somewhere the other 
side of Oklahoma City.

Clear dawn revealed the dead-end of Autumn, 
but hot as Summer. The enfolding hills 
of home had unfolded into horizons 
all the way to the curved edge of the Earth.
The fields were golden stubble and brown 
and gray and white from no rain
at this dead-end since August.
These are fields where people work, 
but do not walk, because there is nowhere to go,
as far as the eye could see, nowhere to go.

In that unfolded expanse,
there were sometimes brown gashes 
where older rains had surprised the ground
with knife-edged, alkaline drops
and left miniature grand canyons
of momentary interest to whiz by.

Finally, we arrived home,
a place with roots deep in the Amarillo soil.
The family was gathered there,
faces of people who knew about horses
and no rain, the sharp spikes of cactus
and mesquite pounded into the surface 
of that thirsty soil. Their roots went 
deep enough to find a little harsh water
to nourish the music of parched conversation 
over an informal Thanksgiving dinner.

Later we weaved through the cactus and mesquite
to a line of low buttes rising a hundred feet to 
flat tops where we could see across 
the quiet, dusty plain.A distant silver train 
caught the sun, and rolled silently beneath us 
in that Autumn heat. 

A jackrabbit skipped across our path
like a stone on still water, and 
some tired bird of prey from nowhere sailed by,
going nowhere.

The heat of that dusty day 
bled into a tired Amarillo night,
so we threw off the unnecessary coverings 
left in preparation for a cold dead end of 
Autumn that had not yet arrived.

Vol Lindsey
11/98

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Clumsy Oaf

in her people’s wisdom,
The author said,
"No Native language has
a cognate for “human” as
separate from other beings."
The NPR interviewer sighed and
became excited by the unity
of all things and the serenity
implied in this foreign paradigm.

I’ve read enough philosophy and
literature to know we "the civilized"
West speak about the conflict of 
man versus nature, so I wonder
how that plays out in the Native
American spirit?

Unity? What is that? Kum by yah?
To honor the soul of the animal
you killed for food, be in love
with the three sisters, be kindred
with the trees, find fellowship
with the twisted rocks and clear
waters who are your home.

How smooth and easy
in contrast to the white man’s
distinct ability to become a
dissonant trumpet, out of tune,
crippled, always able to find
a way to sour the tune.
Every time.

Like all the noise we make as we
carry “diversity” like a spear
because we need our wars and
search for a reason to kill that guy
who isn’t us, to think stewardship 
of the Earth's ethereal beauty 
requires bulldozers and flames.
It is who we are.

We see beauty, but cannot walk in it
with our unentangled, quantum souls; 
yes, we can take its picture, even 
paint it to hang on our sterile walls, 
but only if the colors match the couch.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
02/12/2022

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

A Little Murder

A LITTLE MURDER

Eight crows sorted themselves 
from the background and settled 
on the wires and naked branches
to sing a November song,

CAW!

Abrupt,
like this chill gust of wind
mustered from behind the hill.
My hand reaches for my collar.

CAW!

A leaf skirls sideways down the lawn
to snag on a nameless bush.

CAW! CAW!

The little murder has imposed on my moment
here when I was thinking of other things:
bread milk, impending winter...
This inconvenient trip to town
interrupted by my fascination for these 
harbingers dressed in black who look down,
waiting,
waiting.

CAW!

They watch me decide to play their game.
the sentinel in the top of that isolate  
persimmon rattles his feathers,
adjusts his stance,
disinterested as I should be
in my quiet evening 
now focused on things 
beyond the plans I’ve made.

CAW!

A lift of wings,  
a fumbling for keys,
gravel crunches on my way to the car,
the door chunks heavy in the silence.
I sit, safe for a moment and
pull into the night.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
2002

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

All In

ALL IN

Sometimes things shimmer 
and you have to know why, 
like the way water lingers on rocks
at the edge of a mountain brook. 
It catches the sun a hundred ways
and you are frozen in delight.

It is best to learn a new place 
deep, rather than wide, like 
on that shore when you visit the 
beach and do not understand until
the blue green waves wash you in,
time and time again;
your belly becomes the rumbling surge, 
and you are ground into 
the white sand and purple coquina. 

Free-falling from ten thousand 
feet is my measure of new love, 
I am prickled with a torrent 
of hormones, mouth open in a 
silent wail…

I can step too near the thought of you
without words and am tied by the very
sinews of the Earth, and thus to your 
muscles and bones, so when our fibers 
get tangled and our sweat becomes one
by the side of a mountain brook, 
our vision can narrow time to nothing, 
and we are the only thing there is.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
06/16/2019

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

Anxiety

By the goldfish pond at the end 
of the walk, a spider labors intricately
in the overhanging sage and rosemary
to build a snare for thirsty prey.
A deadly spiral from the center out. 
Out here on the side of the hill
I call my yard, the sun burns through
my shirt and the humidity is thick
enough to drown the impulse I had 
to get something done today. 
I thought to cut the grass, or repair
that place on the house where the rain
has eaten away the wood. I’ve got 
gas for the mower, and lumber,
everything I need except the ambition 
of my youth when nothing could 
stand in my way. But now, I’m not
so hungry I feel any urgency to spin 
anything except around, and head 
back inside the air-conditioned den
to worry about what just happened.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
11/25/2011

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

No Caution

There was no caution when
you loved me with your wildflower eyes
we hung the sun, the moon, the stars,
rocked the world and spun them all.

On the seventh day we rested
danced our blues across the sky
time a bridge suspended,
we will never die
because there was no caution when you
loved me with your wildflower eyes.

Vol Lindsey

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

Blown

We met in the icy waters
of the lake one hot day in July.
In that bright afternoon we
splashed and grew close in the
dark under the raft.
An hour later we climbed 
onto the grassy bank and
walked out on that oak
the wind had laid down
over the trout and 
flash of minnows.
There, the sun turned your
blue skin pink. 
In our leafy universe,
I thought you told me everything.
Next morning, we hiked our 
translucent path to the bright
yellow tree that grew halfway
up our hill like a lighthouse.
The cool Wisconsin evenings
gave us popcorn and hot chocolate
in front of the fire, so we were
anchored alea of the storms and
through all the places we had to go…
school, and kids, and jobs,
but you never let on until 
the hidden things lifted 
their sails in a chill wind
and took you away.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
9/17/2009

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

Blame Starbucks

An article on the internet says
a recent review of roughly 100 studies
notes that while caffeine enhances+
physical, cognitive and motor performance, 
boosts short-term memory, problem solving,
decision making and concentration,
it eliminates a key portion of the
creative process. Caffeine gives a coffee
drinker pinpoint focus, but it doesn't allow
the mind to wander.
And a recent study showed losing focus
helps inspire creative solutions.
It impedes the ability to go into deep sleep, 
which diminishes emotional intelligence, 
constructive thinking and the ability
to cope with stress,
It blunts the ability to solve problems 
and draw connections between
unassociated information.

Hold on a minute, while I refill my cup
and think of where I want to go
with the rest of this poem…
sip, ahhh! Roll my eyes a little…
Hmmm… hold on... um... err...
Nope, it just ain’t happening…

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
6/17/2013

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

Patricia

Sometimes, at the edge of the pasture
under the eaves of trees, the soft
greens of spring slide through my eyes
and paint the curves and shadows of 
you to float like the bare-bottomed moon
settling softly into the grass out there 
where the sky is sliced from the earth
as clean as if by a surgeon’s scalpel.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
12/29/2019

Details | Vol Lindsey Poem

At Last

AT LAST

On my veranda I watch beads of sweat 
slide down the glass of ale I use to get over 
something I’m not sure of, perhaps just an 
absence of idea or thought, a quiet discontent 
that sparrow at the feeder cannot know.
The small bird skitters to his majesty the Red Oak 
who lives slow in the corner of my woods.
He is old enough to speak with substance and 
weight beyond the business of anything I’ll ever do...
To my left that willow I set in the ground some years 
ago waves long wands in the breeze over the water 
and careful plantings on the terraces and slopes. 
And there it is, the sure knowledge ofan ungentle 
slide down three score years and ten to sleep, 
with a paucity of hope for substance and weight.

Copyright
Vol Lindsey
7/12/2004