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Best Poems Written by Ward Trotter

Below are the all-time best Ward Trotter poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Great Horned Owls

Many many moons ago
leaving the porch
of a south-facing canyon,
I hiked to a place 
where the foothills
narrowed,

Where the asphalt road
ran astride the reservoir lake
into which kingfishers
dived at will,  
and Great Horned owls
hooted at passerby,

And crickets chirped
in the castor bean 
in the broom grass,
in the sumac and sorrel
and the scrub oak 
and the sage,

I walked with gathering dusk
upslope to the ridge
where one lone bat
in diving approach,
plunged to air
as kingfisher to lake,

As owl to moon
or as moon to owl 
or as owl to owl,
two owls upon the perch
fated couple
to a lifelong mate.

At this very place
I saw my mission unfold
in ceremony of solemn joining
in deepest respect
this wedded pair
framed aside starlight,

Framed within angles
of better aspect 
placing male to left
female to right,
then married them there
till death do they part,

He in a cassock of feathers
all attention to duty
she with a blink
of a solitary eye,
I with a wave
of the official hand,

"I decree thee man and wife"
I the chaparral poet of authority
captain on this ship
I do wed thee,
witnessed by bat and kingfisher
cricket and castor bean.

And so my sudden voice
startled both to flight
he with wings to eclipse 
the moon, the sky
she in silence
winged forever to his side.

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Mill Creek

A little ways north of Mill Creek
the beach runs round
to a single wide arcing swath

Where the tide stems landward in shattered segments
fast against the open mouth
of sea and sand and barnacle

There is also a cliff near the free stone rising
above the under-base of a million waves
throttling a darkened face

Somewhere out of sight
from landlocked eyes
salt water still churns

And churns for a million years
oblivious to the damage
inflicted on the crumbling mass

It's as if the big bass drum 
of agonies from time immemorial
strums a one note dirge

And thereby summons the shelving mist
to curtail the pitiful death
from the tired eyes of a dumbfounded poet

Who loiters in the wet hiss
like a reporter in search of tragedy
and finding none, returns to home

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Seaweed

All along the bent and angling coast
seaweed strands in sunken coves
abandon their beached forms
from wave to wave

I always chase after them 
their strewn bobbing heads
roll as dead bodies
from wave to wave

What seaweed does not hide
short stories of unknown depths?
submarine worlds where time itself
folds into layered shelves

Under every rubbery leaf
striped then strung to tether in running bands
veins on my father's arm
long long ago

An unseen drift marks the sea's closing line
to leeward straits where I now stand
feet in the sodden growth soil
hand against the shaded bulb

A  frothing whirlpool gathers all the seaweed
roped and braided in dulsing patterns
soft crests falling soundless into outstretched arms
then slap against the burying stone

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Let It Be Recorded

Let it be recorded
my wish to live
where I can sleep 
in good weather or bad
on a beach festooned
in the bric-a-brac
of the ages.

Perhaps a vanishing glow
far to the south
all that is left
of that common pestilence
known intimately
as a lifetime
of earthly dues

Now I am leaning with shoulders leeward
still eyeing the reef submerged
a ship's pilot
steering his vessel
beyond the shoals
victorious
to the open sea

From breath to breath
I exhale the plague
once tyrannical 
against every stemming cell
once dominant
over every
pulsing heartbeat.

The sea now
lives inside my cells
where time itself
tunnels the sun
through woven matrixes
a surface below 
tethered skin

I can only hope
as I fall into sleep
that I soon be awakened
to sea birds squawking 
at something of interest
in the tumbling
surf

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

As Little Boys

As little boys 
we rode bikes
fast down the dunes,
on the vertical side
of Sand City

Big tires creased
deep furrows 
in the down-slope,
same as boats trailing
wakes upon the swell

At the leeward portion
of the great sand hills
the long bronze 
shadows of late noon 
stretched to east

Meeting low pines
over ice plants
just as early suppers
smoked the spice
into mists above

Under which boys grew hungry
and boys grew weary 
when drawn on-shore,
but grew bold again
when looking back to sea

Then fortified, soon returned
astride soft summits
as if to challenge 
the long leading 
boundary of night

A boundary against which
little boys are forbidden,
because bay breakers 
rage half-seen
against the land

Because the turnstiles 
of time get sand
in the gears and
the rising moon
comes fully into its own

Because the dawn sea 
compresses foggy dimensions
into the unlearned territory
of young hearts
with full moon in the eyes

Of four-foot warriors
solemn in afterthought
huddled in a circle
as night overtook
a long day of handiwork

And even the bike furrows
grew silent at last
their contours to vanish
in darkening flatness
somewhere below our feet

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Santa Lucias

The highland Santa Lucias
breach the angled bench of sky and earth
with ancient crests dark in
scrub oak outlines
and vast open slopes.

From that world above
atop the grand and cresting vistas
where once dreams were fetched
in moonlit profiles
from deep slumbers

I must have also dreamt the unmoving
mist as it gathered near
an unnamed summit
drawing to itself weightless fragments
of light and motion.

It was a mist concealing
a spirit speaking the language
of unfathomable contours giving way
to more contours overlapping downslope
and over the last oaken ridge.

Was this a language of my 
childhood mind as I sought to 
wrangle meaning from this alien 
landscape ,so as to make it 
my own?

If so, where did I sleep?
how did I enter that magical terrain
how did I know its depth
like I know the 
flat of my open hand?

These are the mountains of my dreams
rising in sheltered copses
consorting with a thousand faltering voices
in unison to out-sing
even the sea.

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Potato Mountain

Potato Mountain

I will arrive
an habitual escapee
from the rabbit warrens
of central planners

By ferreting north
in search of
breaks in the maze
rifts in the grid

I will follow
a stream beside
the climbing track
and yet higher

To a saddle below
the great ridge 
southward along
eastern slopes

To a fine summit
of long vistas
and white gravel-skirts
exposed to sun

Exposed to eyes
sweeping round
the slow wide circle
of arcs in passage

Years to degree
degree to century
century to millennia 
beyond human sight

And my own frail
footsteps in iron soil
blown to oblivion
by winds now shadowing

My identical track 
passed beehives
thickets and copse
up the potato

To a summit
of concrete pylon
red dirt
and folk art

Where unknown infidels
posed the creative
issue of their 
anonymous fancy

In the form
of starch-fat tubers
affixed with parasols
to shade them

And toothpicks to
give them arms
and bay leaves 
to make them hair

Hats to render
them style
atop bald and oblong 
pates of brown

Wings of sumac leaf
sleek and waxy
to impart mottled skins
flights of fancy

But they cannot fly
like chaparral birds
fitted to wind
and wildness

Unmoving the potatoes 
await their fate
on a flat stage
above the world

Three days pass
their number reduced
in gathering erosions
and mathematical decline

Four days 
the mule deer
has found them
yet still proud potatoes

Pass from deer
to lion to 
slow beetles 
upon the soil

And there the
once magnificent
and well-arrayed
vegetable host

Submits bravely to
mechanical escorts
in the brief free fall 
to worlds below

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

On the Link

On the Link
Track 1 West

Only once before
did the link train run this fast
on a late Sunday last year
I think in the middle of June

But when the train runs fast
these high seats are dumb witness 
to an unbroken rumble
and a high singing rail


We sail on ringing tides of steel
past grinder mills that shift  
their gravel to windward
and their dust from side to side

We slide and banter 
passed north south venues
passed streams of endless corner malls
perpindicular to their stalls

Every angling sunlit exposure
reflected in a flat dimming cast
I  can now see in my image 
looking back at me in the glass

We are racing into the west 
into a hole where the vast city
is awakened by the sound 
of the doppler shift in the horn

West on track one
soon to a tired yawning station
where the crossing lanes converge
quickly vanishing fast

Details | Ward Trotter Poem

Ward Trotter, International Poet

Trotter's words are his deeds
girding the Earth
in great magnetic lines
of universal intent.

In Ward's ritually upraised palm
we see the symbol Coriolis
south draining left
north draining right

Into the realm of Neptune
via the cisterns of Rome
down the ancient river Po
to wicked storms at sea

Into vortices the poet's passport
falls as a man overboard
all its pages torn
one by one.