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Best Poems Written by Mick Friesen

Below are the all-time best Mick Friesen poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Mick Friesen Poem

Looking For Carl Sandburg

Looking for Carl Sandburg

almost one hundred years
after your Chicago apologetic
i am searching for century-old signs of the city
rushing to see them in a few too-short days
when it is bundled in 
cloud and rain and mist and fog
but the bold Big Shoulders are still there
braced against that famous wind
cocooning the brash and brazen young man
defiantly declaring the city as a
titan of industry

but still
on street corner after street corner
the polite poor sing to the city
jangling coins in paper cups
pauper islands in a luxurious sea of
business – industry – culture

almost one hundred years on
looking for signs of your city
i finally sense a shadow of you
sauntering down a grey sidewalk
in the mist and fog
your charcoal coat open – flapping
in the wind
your grey-white hair swept sideways
in that gentlemanly style

yet you are only almost visible
like a water-thin reflection or 
a film of clouds backlit by 
the inconstant moon

your steel eyes ponderous
your lips a solid line
the words to call your name
are as much an apparition as you
disappearing around the corner
a wraith in the mist

Details | Mick Friesen Poem

Time Traveller

she is a  time traveller
past curfew
she has never felt more safe
she has never felt more dangerous
she has never felt more alone
she has never felt more her own

she is a time traveller
past curfew
her hair a trail of jet stream
spine stiffening
fingers clenching
eyes darting

she means it:
racing the shadows
floating on waves of dark and white
of tentative streetlamp light
slipping in and out
she rides towards home

but in darkness curfews 
are sliding sand 
(seconds - hours - minutes)
granules plummeting the funneled
hour-glass design
murmured syllables of recorded time

and past the appointed hour 
in darkness she rides
home churning the pedals
of that red bike like
she means it
she is a time traveller