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Best Poems Written by Robert Ludden

Below are the all-time best Robert Ludden poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Making Our Way

Did you even note;
an imposter is in our midst!
And our beloved Tube is the originator.
Faithless beast, merely nipping
at our consciousness for many years
and now the unsuspecting weather man
is the infected carrier, flipping forth
without a care--unconsciously,
the old ageworn and frazzled fellow
practiced through the decades, now
hallowed by the dapper dans as
respected common fare.  I give you
the uncelebrated, very frequent and
Unconscious Obstinate Cliche.

No, this not a sexist accusation, boys.
The fetching weather bunnies
will not face indictment by my pen.
Though often glorified as chief
among the holders of degree
in meteorology, it is the men most prone
to say, "As we make our way into...."
the weekend, or such travels
that we helpless viewers take.

But politics, not weather news,
may have the honor of origination.
Sixty years ago I first became aware
when a network commentator told us
of a president, no less,
"making his way" down the aisle
to deliver his thoughts on
the state of the union.

"And us", you say?
Well, I for one may make my way
into oblivion
with just the right amount of
claim to fame. That I (ahem)
duly noted, dedicated, scribed and launched
a new cliche upon a very
celebrated list for all of humankind.
      ~

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Invitation To the Dance

It is not the music,
for one knows it in the heat
that rises from a cool miasma,
sardonic, self-igniting--
the one that ravages and never warms,
consumes, and cannot care.

Cold flame is of another art, and passionless.
It is the counterpart of a humanity
that gasps at loveliness
but grasps an aged, trembling hand
and cannot understand a trembling deity
which would implore and not demand.

It is a danse macabre...
there is no peace in pretense, for
it smells of fear, the while
its nourishment is truth.
It strikes through speaking
through closed hands and open hearts.
It makes of war and gentleness a home,
an irony,  and often even does it
arm in arm.

And how importunate, the lead
who dares to ask of poverty
a share of its insolvence--
knowing greed is corporate,
while sacrifice is of the self alone.
To  find it set apart for lesser goals,
it lies and gathers slippery sides,
setting off solutions for another day;
the night shall have its queen!

For she is Paradox
who sweeps across the room.
In gracious rule she covets,
blesses solitude, and ridicules its joy.
Hers lurks behind a mask 
of beauty and romance;
the skin is putrid, the conceit
is infinite.

Hers is the blood that feasts
upon itself, that beats
upon a tympanum within--
its cadence to the dance
forever incomplete.
               ~

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Icons Set In Stone

How firmly they stand,
the spires of history
that no one can destroy.
What a curious melange
of hate and love
and yesterday's antipathy.
Indifferent they are,
leaving us their basic legacy-- 
shining, mocking; it is their heritage,
and the winds of change have no effect
upon a single word.

Within their shadow is enshrined,
the totality of every lie 
and every truth we ever knew.
Tread softly in their midst--
It is rarified companionship they offer.
Dare we even to essay to smooth the path
historic footsteps made, 
or cleared the way for ours?

There is no answer from the silent skies.
It is the empty flagon of serenity,
the hopeless void that stretches out forever,
calling forth the meditator to his bench,
and time to its eternal rest.
        ~

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Resurrection

The dead still walk
within our memories,
and breathe 
and smile 
and talk
inside that strange preserve we keep,
a room still redolent with life
above the boxes where they sleep.

What irony prevails, that we
may call them forth upon a whim
as frozen servants microwaved,
enjoyed, and then returned at will
to their uncertain rest.

Might we indulge them,
favoring a spirit laugh
at our audacity? 
Might they indeed, be guiding us
inside our stumbling bones,
inside this diorama 
quite obsessed by touch?

We might do well to understand
they fly to us 
with such astounding love
to fill our reminiscenses
upon demand, and yet
with sad politeness fade away
at suppertime.
                   ~

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My Heresy

I like my God much better than the one
who made his home up in the stratosphere
and favored us with visits now and then,
harrumphing down below about the way
that we behave, and tantalizing us
with sticks and carrots grown especially
for those who said the secret word or not,
by having properly proclaimed one man a king: 
all this, of course. was indirect.
The voice of supernature wasn't heard;
the being had a handicap as beings will,
and yet the silence was as heaven-sent.
For I, the fallen one, would live because
the son would die. That was the sense of it.

But making sense is for the sensible,
and arms and legs and progeny fall short
of that pure consciousness which stubbornly
insists on such intangibles as wind
and breath and spirit time to mark its age, 
its truth, and its enlightenment.

It is in such an ocean that I swim;
It is in such transcendant holiness
that I perceive a new compulsion, bent
to scale the mountaintops, 
to part the mist,
and finally to show the face of God.
                           ~

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Another Tongue

If passion speaks beyond self-centered will,
if stones may cry aloud because a man 
keeps silence, or if whispers wash the mind 
as storms in springtime will refresh the earth,
then it is poetry  that feeds our hearts.

At birth it is a soft caress that would
protect and nourish thought in gentleness,
to draw from deep within, a song that prose
could not express, a sigh devoid of art
that art alone may sing,  
the singer but an instrument, 
and that of conscious awe.

All  this, and still demanding to be heard,
for if it were not so, we would not know
or speak of poets; wars might then 
be just regretted or dismissed as lost 
for lack of strategy; arms would 
be taken up for power alone 
and men would then survive
in shallow grief, insouciant within,
a tired state of lethargy, where no one 
ever cares.

The powers of heavenly places may be thanked,
for muses dwell upon Olympus, not
within the hell of circumstance,  or haste,
or juvenile romance--
for there is power indeed when insight travels 
where the lofty giants led 
and left upon their pages, majesty, 
and bled, and wept, and gave us beauty 
that device alone could only try to emulate, 
and fade away.
           ~

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Distilled Purity

One has to like the price,
which never fluctuates.
It floats,
like some suspended orb
imparted from another heaven, perhaps...
itself a consciousness unknown
and undefiled. 
It is the good the ages seek,
still there before our eyes.

Were there a formula,
a prize to touch or taste,
it would not occupy the metaphor
of grace nor scorn its worshipers.
There's time to let the rain sweep down
the valley, time to revel
in the harvest when the fullness comes.
It's time to yield a little, come alive
to listen while the piper plays;
the air is sweet,
the song is of the eminence of day.

If there is any paradise
let us make room for it
within our precious now
though set upon with every fond device
of intellect to struggle to our feet;
the highest good not ours alone,
persists in that strange crystalline precipitate 
when all is done—old Paul knew what it was
and called it love.
                 ~

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The Educated Man

"He can sit in a room, and not perish"*
Or might he stand upon the deck,
release the dove, and weep for years,
not for its loss,
nor for the triumph of its flight
above the waters; they are not of God,
they are the backwash of our fears.

There in his room alone,
imprisoned by his conscience
he may let his mind fly free
while tears beneath his wings
may no more flood the ground.
But we are not alone;
we have the educated man fulfilled...
and weeping.  He has not such irony
for comfort.

It is a flood to cling to.
Fears, we understand;
they are our bulwark
when an educated man could speak—
could sweep us all away with wonder,
separate us from such grand pretensions.

We are not free to weep with him.
We may not seek the refuge of the mind,
eyes not for insight, not for closing,
senses bound upon another time
away, another circus of distraction,
yes, another box of little men
to dance upon the screen.

It is a dance to take away our fears,
a dance beguiling death,
suspending it awhile with candied tears
and frosted dreams protecting us from envy,
nodding to the educated man apart,

who sits there in his room alone
and weeping for us,
just as we who may not see
across the arch of his reality,
cannot.
              ~
*quotation from Jacques Barzun

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Apostrophe To Dad

I think of how it was ten years ago
just after you departed.
All your close friends spoke
of your "complexity"
and we knew what it meant.

I look far back to childhood when
those small-town midwest Methodists
would call you "Revrund."  Well they knew
of turned-on tears
so common in the meeting hall;
but did they know about
the "turned-on" ladies
when you came to call?

I know.  You needed time with them.
Two small churches took so much
with little left for us;  I still recall
the single three hour evening
when you took me out of town alone
--to still another church!

There came a time for change;
as a chaplain in the army,
far away from mother, there
you quickly found the antidote
for loneliness...and yet again,
and again, again...

And then so late in life,
about to lose your second wife
through age and frailty,
you saw another, caught her
waiting in the wings, you thought.

All through those years you toiled
(if not quite single-mindedly)
in dedicated sacrifice for God
(if not for family).

How you were loved! 
Clay footed, to be sure,
yet everything you did
was passion-filled;
you wept and prayed
and laughed and played,
presiding to the end.

Complex, you were, indeed, my father,
the record clear and true
and I for one, will judge you not.
for I am much like you!
               ~

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It's Harvest Time

Behind the reaper, glistening beneath
the fading rays of light,
crude elements of happenstance
lie in its wake, passed over
and awaiting those who glean
the afterbirth.

Yes, there is that querulous
persistence of the poor,
that stubborn cadre of the prescient,
who will peer into our souls
and find us bankrupt, 
mind and consciousness already unaware.
It is a curious, stolid procession 
passing by--these ghosts 
on their ironic quest into tomorrow. 
No one may cheer them on; no one
may find a voice to hold them back.

There is no choice, for
we must be content to find ourselves
among the gleaners, though it is we
who sang our welcome to the reapers--
we, who watched the harvest come,                              
and hungered after it.

And it was we who faced the disillusionment
of barren fields with gleaming bits
of paper bibelot
to laugh and mock us
as we ploughed them underneath.

But fullness too, lurked there
in silent modesty behind the plough.
Patient gleaners know
that down the long, slow hall of history
there is a single echo: 
Truth is unchanging...paradox!

There was triumph in the air, 
and no man was a slave to it.
I deeply sighed and took a breath
and opened up my eyes.
And it was good.
      ~