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Best Poems Written by Michael Parker

Below are the all-time best Michael Parker poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A Poem for a Year's Ending

By Michael Parker

Days have flown quickly by like fearsome comets.
Here then gone; here then gone.

My hair is colored moonlight.
My bones are brittle as the limbs
of the trees cracking
from the touch of winter’s deepening freeze.

If I could disclose a secret, it is
suffering has visited me like an old friend.
But if there is anything I know, if there is
something I want to pass on after a year,
it would be this:

the remains of my yesterdays shall be
steps I take in my tomorrows—
emboldened memories, flying aspirations,
lessons administered like sacrament,
perseverance practiced like a holy mantra,
convictions adhered to like Grecian marble,
and hope rooted like mountains.

It is true. What I have lost has broken me,
what I have learned, I do not
want to leave behind.

I aspire to the patience of the moon
through her long cycles,
seeing all our joy
and all our dark history.

I know tomorrow is
the best theory of probability—
a gamble with life, with the Fates
who weave my hours and days
through patterns of the living
and the dead.

I aspire to listen to where the ancients are—
at the windstorm’s end
in that invisible country
now glowing in the widening skies.

I know I am master of the ship
and all strive to maneuver
through the maelstrom
and settle the spirit down
through raging storms.

My hope for the new year—
settle down, wild storms,
settle down.

Copyright © 2021 by Michael Parker. Originally published in the poetry collection, Diving the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush, by Michael Parker, published by the Utah State Poetry Society, 2021.

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At the End of the Street Lies the Sky

By Michael Parker

At the end of the street lies the sky
dressed in the purple magician's robe
of eventide and the winter storm.

Tonight, she sculpts stairs of ice and
snow. She casts spells upon the laden
earth and the dying man can hear
her invitations in the blizzard, 
in dreams that are like all other dreams
except more sound, deep, and vivid.

He leaves while his wife is sleeping.
He leaves without any goodbyes.
There is no gentle kiss for her lips.
No tussling of the boys' hair 
or kiss for the daughter
with the moon-face. 
This is not intentional.
How could he know the destination
of this dream? 

He leaves his house,
walks down the silent street
past rows of barren trees
that shield homes of dear
neighbors who helped round out
the days, grow kids, and watch
year after year arrive and depart.

He does not think this odd tonight.
He considers it an adventure,
walking past the shroud of snow
and on to glistening stairs
that climb the breast of sky.

Copyright © 2021 by Michael Parker. Originally published in Utah Magazine, 2006. Also published in the poetry collection, Diving the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush, by Michael Parker, published by the Utah State Poetry Society, 2021.

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Knight of Wands

By Michael Parker
October nineteenth. two-hundred-ninety-third day of the year. It’s Mercurii, and the waning Hunter moon sits by Orion’s stretched thigh. Hydra lifts her head out of its eastern hole (there, next to Orion’s foot), wanting to devour the cadmium-hued moon.

What explains our struggles’ centrality?

At night, we sit by the window waiting for our suffering to leave;
the desolation of pain’s long war, and how that
pain changes and consumes
every single ounce of us.

This just might be the answer.

We have lost the guide star.
The nights are all black and shadows, and
we are bleak with a quotidian affinity for
our very own insufferable violent solitude
(because no one around us knows our pain).

The days are crowned with the southern sun, glowing.
If we walk, we’re crooked; slower than the wind.
Aphids, like tiny-winged fairies, dance like heavy snowfall.
God is soft spoken.
The praying tree has been felled.
Blood has come out on the leaves on the trees.
And dry leaves fall away from their own
beloved green communities.

The Prince of the cards leaves his own Egypt.
(Does he feel the terms: lone, exile, desolate?)
I see he carries a long stick.

I don’t want to believe it’s a weapon in this age of weapons.
Rather, he holds it forward like a diviner’s rod.
Divining a future? Divining life
without the fear of increased pain
(which chokes sufferers like ivy about the neck)?

Yes, the angels seem to have lost us.
Lost to us in our kingdoms of the unapproachable.
Lost to us in their great and benevolent flight to
minister to the forsaken living and
the unburdened dead.

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Love as a Chagall

By Michael Parker
…when art and love are of one stuff.
– “The Poem Unheard” by Amanda Hall

Love is like a Chagall—
the bride and groom floating
high above Paris
the blue of the sky holding them
aloft with unadulterated joy.

Men with faces of animals
play violins and flutes
and a vision of a young couple
a child standing upon the mother’s knee
acts as a revelation of their future.

And a crescent moon peers around
a cloud like the eye of God.

If Chagall painted the story of our love,
we, too, would be leaping through cerulean sky,
jubilantly flying above a city.

My left hand clasps your hand.
My right hand reaches up to hold
the crescent moon, because that is
how monumental this moment is.

Below us, on a wide city street,
there would be a march of revelers,
with faces of animals,
playing a marriage anthem with
trumpets, flutes, clarinets
and violins.

In the corner, there would be a vision
of our three children, yet to be born,
standing before our yellow house;
the curve of an eye
with a navy-colored pupil
illustrated upon its roof.

On the opposite side
a bourgeoning bouquet of flowers
in a white vase stands taller
than our sunshine-colored house,
a symbol of our flourishing love.

All the metaphors would best suit our love.
All the world participating in the celebration
of our beloved connection.