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Frank Daub Poem
To a Certain Poet
by Frank Daub
Your modesty -- regarding talent? BECOMING to your SOUL.
The decision to embrace this thought? Belies your role –
As MESSENGER.
Long ago you took the mission
To tell beauty in words and lines.
Now time has blurred your vision.
Now doubt has wormed your mind.
Think about the adulation –
Deny those words are true!
It is you might stop creation –
It is you must see it through!
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
The Question Is
By Frank Daub
How could I have doubted
in that sky-colored look of yours
any
words spilled in the air between us.
With the melting honey fragrance of
your hair
and the litany of intentions filling
the pale luster of your face.
How could I have questioned anything.
Or would it have been less fruitful
if I had not said
that I was not certain.
To give you stronger opportunity to speak
assurance.
It is a young game
that keeps us young and close --
the question is.
And the answer comes from the sky-color
of your eyes –
in a soothing torrent of yes.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
September’s Apples
By Frank Daub
September apples rest in the cellar,
barely in the light,
mellow,
turning cider
beneath their shining skins like cinnamon wine.
I bite one –
juice bubbles out
to the edges of my mouth.
There is sweetness first.
Then at once the tart September taste and
the white circle roughly broken from
the red round.
How long, I wonder, before the white darkens.
The white goes nut colored
before
I can finish peeling the red entirety --
Or
after I’ve taken the first bite.
What is it that makes us put apples in the cellar?
To keep them Autumn-like, extending the
crispness of a season bringing harvest?
This, or it does something to their flavor that the sun can’t finish.
I try to remember how the apples tasted when the old man and I pulled them
from the tree.
They were cold.
A little less mellow.
They are sweeter now.
Being buried was good for them. Buried in the deep cool of this cellar,
away from the sun.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
Simplicity
by Frank Daub
I showed a wooden pencil to a friend.
He tried to give attention
going directly to the end
of the pointed lead.
“You have to sharpen that,” he said,
analyzing quickly my waste of time.
He preferred drop-down menus
on miniscule screens
while waiting in a line.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
Poignant
Poignant is not a word
but theater every day.
It's the sweetest act most hidden
from the one who wrote the play.
Packaged in small to medium
it often goes unseen; never
tedium to the driven
who would rather climb than dream.
In speeches, books and interviews
of noted women and men,
Poignant never comes to mind
until they reach the end.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
New Born
By Frank Daub
Putting up the wash – Again
one wooden clothes pin gripped
tightly
in her lips. On toe-tips; blonde hair wind-whipped
dangling in her eyes.
The sun an apricot surprise
on the back of her legs.
All busy hanging clothes
and
Watching in the yard to see the baby lulling in the doze
Of May.
My perennial loving Guard.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
A poem by Frank Daub
I’m for stopping; Brendan’s not.
The sea is just down there.
I am anxious for the sight
of stone turned to bread by the wash
of foam and the jetting of the salt water.
I’m for stopping; Brendan’s not.
The spiraling gulls
are sun lighted bright in their play
above the sand,
their startling dive
toward the sea is brief
in time and sight.
I’m for stopping; Brendan’s not.
The freedom of the coast
was eight hundred years
at taking.
One bold county man’s toast
to the awakening water
baptizes the youth
who have forgotten Eire for other lovers.
I’m for stopping; Brendan’s not.
I haven’t heard the all
of every song
or the rise and fall
and rise of every story
that set a mother’s son
free to calculate a career.
I stand for stopping; Brendan says, “too late.”
I want to stay
where the past has gone,
old rebel cries and songs.
Yet,
it’s Brendan through the gate,
and gone
and done
and through with old.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
Friends
by Frank Daub
It was an open door
that, without sound,
called me in.
I stood with hesitation until I realized my sin
of never trusting.
I reckoned, in the human-only-way,
that such a friendly looking door
could only be surprise demand
of meeting expectations.
I saw only with my eyes
and not my soul.
Yet without entering through that threshold,
I somehow realized
That I could not be whole
enough to love.
Outside I waited, long enough
to shake the fear and take the chance
that there are friends inside,
friends to bring me song and dance,
to bring me dreams
to tell me stories of loving.
I entered then,
And enter every chance that comes,
To meet and sing and dance,
To know that I am home.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
Garden
by Frank Daub
I will talk with you tonight
and – you will answer with yellow flowers,
pale yellow roses,
BRIGHT
wax leaves tied in splashed white bowers.
In dark and on a sea
of white,
You will breathe
into my hand
Perfuming eternity with your gift --
To never leave.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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Frank Daub Poem
Why the Irish Sing and Dance
by Frank Daub
Which the merrier – a speech or song?
One moves men to freedom
the other dances the soul along.
If they could, the Irish would
Transport their freedom to all the world.
From Parnell’s fire and flame
To Pearce’s sacramental offerings seldom heard.
Yet it is their music, the dreamer’s lively feet at dance,
That makes them known best.
Its poems set to music that brings the good unrest.
Then why their gift of blarney?
Why their speeches set to life?
They’ve made their songs their army,
to combat tears and strife.
The Irish are not selfish, and radiate from sea to sea,
The message that their music makes?
Every freedom fighter
Free.
Copyright © Frank Daub | Year Posted 2026
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