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Best Poems Written by Don Schaeffer

Below are the all-time best Don Schaeffer poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Lover of Ghosts

Creatures of
spirit, poets are,
softness, invisibility,
things whose existence
extends in time.
Hard things, 
of the eyes,
of the earth, of matter
are for cynics,
humorists and critics.
Poets are lovers,
engrossed in love
and memory of love,
in sad recollection,
and mourning.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Sequestration

(This is an evolving story. I keep adding verses until I'm done.)



When I was 
eighty-two, 
I went to live alone 
knowing the money would 
forever be coming. 
Going away felt appropriate 
for a man my age. 
The closest analog 
to the womb 
and to death. 
To be alive, 
clothed in the 
warmth of certainty 
amid my own unchallenged opinions
during the age of ending, 
out of the business 
of a bright, moving planet 
my own part in the world 
outdated and roots 
severed. 

I found a place
in the middle of the trees 
with a thin asphalt egress 
that made it easy 
to cycle to the village. 
I was surrounded by 
the aliens of the earth 
with their secret languages 
and concentrated lives. 
I truly lived among strangers, 
not those wanting to know me 
or able to know me. 
It was like the world 
before I opened my eyes. 
It was here and far away.

Delivered here in a storm 
under which the taxi 
and me 
and the driver 
were as tiny as sugar molecules. 
The driver introduced himself as Charles. 
He is a black man from Aruba, 
Charles an English royal name. 
I ran to the door 
holding a newspaper on my head 
as Charles soaked himself 
carrying my black bags.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

The Insanity of the Old

Protected from the past, 
insulated in a box 
made of star-dust, 
closed where it 
points to the earth 
but open toward the 
vacuum of the sky,

why does he
bring the old world back 
when he creates his dreams?

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Fifteen Words

He told me
 his last 
 real conversation was in
 nineteen-fifty-five. And that was
  thirty minutes
 on the sidewalk
 with an interested stranger.
 Those that love him
 respect his silence,
 keep him to a fifteen word
 maximum. That allows them
 to get along. Silence is the juice
 of that loving home.
 He told me
 how he dreamed of
 lectures, long and
 deep draughts
 of speech.
 He dreamed of
 eyes bright with
 the lights from his stage.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

The First Tone Poem

I chug upward
as the air
thins, the sky
blues the stars.
Then it, at the peak,
stops. Music
is not like life.
Envisioning the rhythm of time,
when the now point arrives
there is no view.
I have to tumble 
slide down
letting out 
the melody
of my breath.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Poem From Microscope Man

It could also be a return to something simple, 
a world of closed loops 
where kinks and corners weren't invented, 
where animals mixed and organelles 
slipped through each other, 
eating inside each other 
within impossible rooms of gelatin.

Out here, we hold the line 
cold and fast. We lock and crimp sharp.
The circle is only an ideal we can't match. 
The thought comes up 
from the tube of body and brain.

And I want to make vows. 
Promises give bones to my ameboid nature, 
freeze me into a shape. Keep time from 
spreading me. 

I can imagine leaning back 
into someone I can trust, 
someone loyal. I would vow first, 
pledge allegiance, then 
assume it would forever be 
the same and equal, a stasis. 

Days would pass and pass, 
morning first judgements, 
afternoon fulfillments, 
evening muddled driftings 
and slow, graceful nights.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Suffolk

We live in a little valley
once famous for cedar trees. 
The name is no longer a label
but celebrates the past
as do most places in this country.

It is a place with monuments
old but not ancient,
unkempt mansions that
cling to use,
solemnized as party sites
for weddings.

We can't deny its beauty
that lives beyond the ruins,
the joyous harbor that
harmonizes generously with sun and clouds,
the great meadow, the people with their
strange but utilitarian costumes
who build their bodies along the road.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Freud's Theory of Human Development

The purpose of the world
is to tell you what you can't do.
The world is made to
keep your ambitions scarred.
You will not get
what you can't move
past the filter of the world.
The standard is set high,
too high for me.
Maybe I should have
rested a long time ago.
Maybe I should have 
slept without fear.
Now I know how I lost. I am
made real by knowlege.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

My Approach To the Future

When I am seventy-four 
I will apologize.
It will be a narrative
of explanations,
an elaborate blush.
I will say
“oh God”
to smooth the past.

Details | Don Schaeffer Poem

Latest In Solar Power

They will make
glass cells
filled with small
bugs that
believe in tiny universes.
They will
harvest the hydrocarbon
gasses bugs 
spawn from the sunlight
to heat their coffee cups.