Reading and "Making" Short Rhyming Poems with Metaphors
Short Rhyming Poems
NOTE: You'll find many short rhyming poems on other pages of this site as well as on this one.
All the poems which appear on this page are taken
from 21ST CENTURY BREAD © 2007 by Leland Jamieson.
You are welcome to copy any poem as long as you credit
the book, author, and copyright date. Enjoy!
Change Pace Poetry 36:
Stub My Toe on E=MC² ?
How can sun’s distant rock send warmth to me?
How can that warmth be stone that stubs my toe?
Each one, my toe also, is energy
in differing density and status quo.
If I could stretch my arms out and embrace
the Zero Point Field’s quarky micro-caper
in just a meter, cubed, of “empty” space,
and splash it in Earth’s seas, they’d flash to vapor!
The Zero Point Field is the heroine
of Matter, Life, and all Intelligence.
She is Non-local Mind our brains tune in
when we give up and lean on our sixth sense.
Why is it, still, we flee from this abyss
which Eastern sages long have called our Bliss?
Sweater — with Zipper
For G.K.J.
A knitter’s knitter, you don’t join the back
to front, or sleeves to shoulders’ yawning holes
by sewing — that would throw them out of whack.
Those stitch- and row-counts now play vital roles.
Good tension’s kept all parts in true proportion.
You weave each knit or purl’s end loop (none rolls
away) and, artfully, without contortion,
the parts become a whole — not tight, not loose —
a seamless fit that’s free of all distortion . . . .
Un-spooling thread to arms’ hypotenuse,
you snip it clean, and with the scarcest glance
thread eye of needle arched by steadfast use.
You draw it through the eye and make it dance
tautly in mid-air — quickly knotting it
with fingers of one hand — as though in a trance.
Basting the zipper to a long smooth fit
without a single pucker up or down,
you whip it snug. How beautifully you knit!
Tent of Snorers
I leave my bathhouse clogs outside the tent,
unzip, re-zip the screen, but mutely sigh,
come three o’clock, and thrash in discontent
that sunrise takes so long to paint the sky.
No dream, no nightmare graces open eye,
redeems this time with creativity —
unless it is revealing just to be.
Change Pace Poetry 35:
The Siren’s Cry
Hartford, Connecticut.
In memory of E.T.P.
The siren’s cry across the frozen brook
recalls the harshest ride we ever took.
Strapped to a stretcher (I was perched awry),
you first implored me, “Son, just let me die.”
I would have satisfied you if I could.
Your home in Florida I’d closed for good,
flown back — your withered arm on mine (this you?) —
arranged for you a room with a mountain view,
and shopped and bought a TV you’d accept.
Once home, so tired, so sad, I wept and wept.
Your home back in DeLand no longer there,
my own unsuited to your nursing care,
St. Mary Home no home — a room, a bed,
more like a warehouse full of wailing dead . . . .
Your lips confessed your love, your eyes remorse.
I could not bear the awful weight, the force
your eyes poured out on me at our good-bye,
as I went home, ears ringing with your sigh . . . .
I love you — it was hard to tell you so
against your eyes’ rip tide and undertow.
Sighting Pileated Woodpeckers
Spring Equinox, East Hampton, Connecticut.
For G.K.J.
“Quick, hurry!” you whisper. “A red moustache,
a brilliant hue, just like his swept-back crest!”
A Pileated pounds on our dead ash
and hollows out a hole as big as his vest.
He’s routed carpenter ants, and he’s hard-pressed
to swallow them but for a backward toss
of head that scoffs them down like applesauce.
With sweeping wing beats bigger than a crow’s
revealing bright white undersides, he flies
away — kik kik kik — leaves us on our toes
beside the window, no time for good-byes.
“A sight for sore eyes,” I say. “What a prize!”
“Oh, look!” you say. “ He’s back! And look! Quick! See?
He’s brought his mate! Black forehead. It’s a she!”
A second Pileated! No moustache!
She clings much higher in a rotted birch,
shucks off its wasted bark as though mere trash.
The bug-filled tree repays her for her search . . . .
Both flapping off, they give my heart a lurch.
You say, “I hope they nest with us — or near —
I think they like our bug-bark atmosphere.”
Struck from Lightning
My grand-kids scuff the rug for pinprick bolts
of lightning they can finger-zap on skin —
then giggle when I’m jolted by their volts.
These quanta, of non-local origin,
convey a metaphysical “within,”
illumine mirth in everything absurd —
electrify the heart of this old bird.
Change Pace Poetry 34:
Philosophy 101 in a Difficult Lie
For G.K.J.
The student froths deep intellectual water
and eddies questions toward their roaring falls,
those slippery cataracts which brook no squatter.
The prof deflects her questions (and those brawls
which draw much blood in mental free-for-alls),
since academic discipline entails
its daily syllabus. And he prevails.
Or does he? Look, her mind, a roiling spring,
taps aquifers of origins unknown
which never have run dry — though drought may wring
most farmers’ hands ’til they their spreads disown,
and bankrupt banks with loans that they bemoan.
Plowed fields, those both of farm and academe,
are far more shallow, arid, than they seem.
Her aquifers are charged on forest slopes
of distant mountains swept with sea breeze rain.
They float her feeling and her mind’s wild hopes.
She taps the Zero Point Field’s charged domain
where quanta, quarks and such are known to reign —
source of non-local mind’s telepathy —
which, making liars naked, sets her free.
Shooting Star of No Moment?
In the corner of my eye I glimpsed it whole,
aloft in January’s northern sky —
a meteor dying on a south-bound roll!
Earth’s upper atmosphere consumed it high.
It set no neighbor’s modest house on fire
nor made front page in Earth-bound news nearby.
Yet, has it not touched me, helped me respire?
Its ashes, scattered through the atmosphere,
and rain commingle — give what I require.
All creatures living on this globe cohere
through mineral waters each consumes from Earth —
drenching, evaporating her veneer.
We hug a molten core with radiant girth
erupting in volcanoes belching now
its meteoric flames and ash — its worth.
Did not that meteor’s photons just endow
me freshly, shower me with subtle gifts,
and make me feel at home? My heart say, “Ciao”?
Refractory of Rain
A meditation based on “Spring Rain,” by G.K. Jamieson;
Acrylic on Masonite, 24x30".
Nine days of rain! Enough to make one fidget!
Rain sheets the north porch screen of our log cabin.
Aboard it, grains of fir trees’ pollens gutter
in rivulets, merge, divide, converge in branches.
It seeps out weep-holes at the screen’s base — sad water,
pale yellow with spent pollens and their sorrows.
Will sunlight never break through skies’ gray sorrows?
This ceaseless drum of raindrops makes me fidget
no less than she who, eager, broke my water
six years ago to taste the air of cabin.
But cabin air now cloys, and clogs lungs’ branches
and panics us — we leap into the gutter.
How can I pluck our spirits from this gutter?
How not give up when facing all these sorrows?
They snag us just like prickly briar-patch branches
past which we try to slip, in hampered fidget,
en-pointe nine days of drumming rain . . . . We’ve cabin
fever, and thirsts we cannot slake with water.
“Let’s find, sweet child, fresh color in the water!
The air’s so wet, acrylics dribble, gutter
our easels — quick — fetch dry rags in the cabin . . . .
Choose colors, brush, knife, fingers — for those sorrows.
Transpose what you are feeling, every fidget,
to pinking sky, green leaves, to purple branches.”
Robust, each ruddy trunk thrusts up its branches,
takes up, by capillary action, water
combined with mineral wealth of soil (no fidget
resists their slurped ascent from soggy gutter).
Their gifts are water’s hardwoods — built of sorrows
respired through leaves. Their timbers frame our cabin.
Their split logs blaze away and warm our cabin,
while oxygen, respired from leafy branches,
burns also in our lungs and sweeps up sorrows
on breaths released in vapor — gifts of water!
Can water pluck us up from vapored gutter
and lift us by our every writhing fidget?
We’re pearls of water — lustrous in this cabin,
laying up pigment (gutter’s roots, sky’s branches) —
in hues refracted in each fidget’s sorrows.
Change Pace Poetry 33:
Painter’s Dimension
For G.K.J.
Her eye, her hand, her maulstick all construe
(beyond her choice of focus, mood, hard-won
perspective, foreground, color, line and hue)
Illusion . . . bent in wordless Orison
intent to simplify from three to two —
with pigment’s mantra, canvas’ ear — to One.
Orthodoxies
A meditation based in part on
Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles.
When my faint Inner Eye is not too dense,
and revels in the night sky’s bright array,
I do believe Divine Intelligence —
Creator of All — makes galaxies obey
great laws of physics I can’t hope to weigh.
What is that distant dying star’s black hole . . . ?
What is that fine-tuned cosmic barcarolle?
And when my Inner Eye seeks excellence
up close, it relishes the heart’s deep ways.
There, too, I “see” Divine Intelligence
prevails — makes hormones its habitués,
gives neurotransmitters their A-OK’s.
(They’re quicker, keener than these human hands,
than arms embracing — and, each understands.)
If Inner Eye could see with full Sixth Sense,
and oft-spooked heart feel safe, what might they say?
Perhaps they’d say Divine Intelligence
best shows Itself direct, not through moiré
laid down back in the Anunnaki’s day,
now seen in “Born-Agains” who’re so up tight
with drumming orthodox each proselyte.
Oyster’s Counsel
For S.J.E. — Reflecting on an old photo,
and remembering MayBelle, not present.
While Mom and I gaze into Daddy’s face
behind the camera, your eyes stray away,
survey Alhambra Circle, North, embrace
some other consciousness that yesterday.
A battered toy (a DC-3) you hold
nose-up between your hands, the purple grapes
Mom holds in hers, and one my lips enfold
have for the moment calmed us jackanapes.
Today, on looking back, I sniff the sauce
that lit our eyes and warmed our smiles, congealed
’til now — Dad’s un-wept death an albatross
that vexed our hearts ’til tempered, grieved, and healed.
Divinity, said MayBelle, foreordains.
The oyster counsels us: En-pearl all pains.
Change Pace Poetry 32:
Needles in a Pinewood
I trample, snapping twigs, a trackless wood
so overcast I can’t point toward the sun.
I’d read the moss on pine trunks if I could
but it encrusts all sides of every one.
Had I a compass with a goad still good,
by Earth’s magnetic North phenomenon
I’d needle home to house and neighborhood
and not feel quite so mindlessly undone.
Nor will my soul’s Earth North, which underlies
this self I call my personality —
this web of pine roots, pitch-dripped whats and whys,
this marsh of sulphur springs, this mimicry
of love it’s said all well-wrought lives construe —
though needling me, quite swing its goad in view.
New Yorker in His Lap
DeLand, Florida.
In memory of G.M.P.
Martini carefully clasped in his left hand,
New Yorker under arm, he tossed junk mail.
A smile lit up his eyes and face — he planned
“an evening in the City” where he’d sail
its noisy streets, view storefronts’ bright detail,
all re-imagined with a young man’s flair
without so much as rising from his chair.
In person, he’d not dare to go back there
(or Boston, either one). He’d feel such loss,
lost landmarks and lost self: the debonair,
“Most Likely to Succeed” who would not gloss —
lost glitzy sales — who, angry at his boss,
had quit, in '31, his well-paid job
with the City’s best known architectural snob.
He peddled stoves, gas heaters — and lost heart.
Rescued by friends, he sailed to Egypt for
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He worked on Tutankhamen’s tomb with rapport,
acting as the Curator’s ambassador,
acquiring the Mediterranean “eye”
that he’d become well-known for — by-and-by . . . .
But Harvard, Boston, New York City — then
was then, and so is “by-and-by,” now, too!
He sits. He dozes off. He wakes in Zen,
warming to the view there’s nothing he could do,
or would, much differently — and he’d not rue
a single day as long as he had brains,
time come, to toss the astral plane the reins.
A ‘Ninth’ to Remember
A late apocryphal story from the concert
hall, orchestra floor, center, first row.
The choral voices all are stilled —
the strings, the winds, percussion too.
Beethoven, deaf, eyes closed, is thrilled,
“lost” in the score. He has no clue —
he pounds his cane upon the floor.
“Bravo!” resounds, as the audience stands.
Loud cries: “Repeat! Again! Play more . . . !”
Beethoven, deaf, weeps in his hands.
He weeps not just because he feels
the warmth of the audience — its golden
acceptance of a work that heals
with joy in voices notes embolden . . . .
He weeps since he can’t persevere.
New scores still soar his Inner Ear.
Change Pace Poetry 31:
In Water Over His Head
“The Bronzed Child,” by G. K. Jamieson; 12x18" pastel, from
a 9x12" pencil study, from a 3x5" black and white snapshot.
From this small snap the artist made her sketch —
she loves a little child, her pick makes clear:
First tooth is gone. He clings (it’s quite a stretch)
to the pool-side’s guttering drain it would appear.
Can’t swim, perhaps . . . ? He plays with a toy ketch.
The pencil study’s lines and shades career
the sheet with joy he takes in holidays.
His eyes are bright with glee, sprung from that sphere
behind his forehead where all feeling plays
and spirit leaps and prances ear to ear.
Her strong pastel: His spirit ricochets
out squinted irises and whites below
a broad and sun-bronzed brow the water sprays . . . .
Slightly oblique, his glance says, I could go
for peanut butter, jelly — NOT soufflés.
A Modest Hope
Two spotted goats, one brown, one mostly black,
chomp grass in this abandoned burial plot.
They nuzzle round each flat-laid granite plaque,
and take great care (as grounds-keeps who’re well-taught)
with bone-bound longings wasting now in rot . . . .
Goats’ rancid exhalations — might it be? —
may spring some unrequited spirits free.
Invitation from the Zero Point Field
This winter, for a holiday, try mind’s
solarium banked deep in snow and sun:
lush palms, gardenias, a flowing brook that winds
round warbling stones’ untutored orison . . . .
One’s own poor prayer is by the stones’ outdone.
What stone, what man, can need petition’s plea
when Immanent, Transcendent, both, each be?
Change Pace Poetry 30:
In the Crowd at the Big H
I spy them, each in boots and jeans,
calico shirts and cowboy hats,
just barely out of their own teens
waving off horseflies and the gnats.
Among these thousands just like them,
4-H-ers come to show, or see,
Blue-Ribboned livestock, each a gem —
what draws my eye? Not his goatee.
They amble, his hand on her nape —
not a caress. Then, what? A check?
He steer her? Lest she bolt, escape?
One clasps a bottle by the neck,
a woman friend by hand or waist . . . .
Or is she livestock he has aced?
Homing
DeLand, Florida.
In memory of E.T.P.
For S.J.E.
We stepped inside St. Barnabas Church
through its back foyer to the nave.
I walked, it seemed, by halt and lurch
on legs with buckling knees — not brave.
Our mother’s ashes, boxed, I gave
a red-and-white robed acolyte
who swept them up into the rite.
Free of her Parkinson’s at last!
Two decades it had robbed her rest
and roped her to the foundering mast
of meds that made her so depressed . . . .
The incense spiraled up, a beau geste
to her persisting spirit — svelte,
homing at last — as we, caged, knelt.
Home to the Flow where all belong . . . .
But first, these ashes in their box
of marbled cardboard must prolong
our public pain of loss . . . to Bach’s
cantatas, clerics in their frocks,
to scattered townsfolk — few who knew
her in this cage — who say, “Adieu.”
The Hook
For W.T.J., recalling a time when he was five.
“Papa, how can they breathe beneath the dirt?”
(Night crawlers churned inside my pail of bait.)
“Good question, Bill. Don’t know. They look alert.”
“Alert?” “Uh . . . lively.” “Let’s not leave too late
to look up, ‘Can they breathe . . . ?’ Papa, you hate
these worms?” “No . . . .” “How can I not feel like jelly,
not feel the hook slice through my own soft belly?
“How — when a fish bites down on worm and hook —
can I not feel a piercing barb snag me?
It drags me, cheek and jaw, up from my brook.
I flip-flop in my net, then on my knee.
I thirst, and drown in air I cannot flee . . . .
It’s fun to be with you — work line and reel
with you — can, maybe, you help me not feel?”
Change Pace Poetry 29:
The Glove
In memory of L.S.J.
I, prodigal, aroused from sleep,
am hungry — yet my palate’s filled
with fragrant after-taste, quite deep.
I ask, why was I so ill-willed?
Papaya, guava, mango which
I once so loved . . . again I taste.
That dream! I sat, without an itch,
broke fast with Dad, felt warmly graced!
What destiny was it I sought
denying Mom and Dad’s deep love?
I guess I thought I might have bought
some freedom from his deathly glove . . . .
His glove has morphed into my hand.
I draw it snugly on, and stand.
Hearthstone in the Watershed
Hiking in Connecticut. Early Spring.
For M.B., with thanks for the crow.
This watershed is laced with walls of stone
hardscrabble farmers clanged with plough, dug up
by “Gee!” and “Haw!” and dragged to bound fields blown
so bare by winter no crow swooped to sup . . . .
A tulip tree well-past a hundred years
ago took root within this cellar hole
beside a hearth where once moms roasted ears
of corn and simmered chowder, bowl on bowl.
The love of place — that fell away as they
exhausted all its soil, burned every tree,
their kids rode west and elders died away —
feels present still in moss-green stone debris,
in frost-felled hearthstone . . . sun its only heat.
We sit on it, and rub our weary feet.
Homecoming
Beyond what sunlight knifes into my eye,
what uproar shrills each near-deaf outer ear,
what nostrils snort, coarse fingers grasp, nails try —
way past perceptions fetching fear (or cheer)
that I’m aware of — lies a vaster sphere.
“The Zero Point Field,” physicists call it.
Some say it’s where to go if you’d keep fit.
So there I go, to Inner-Outer Deeps,
as In-and-Out my breaths reciprocate,
and I release what gives my heart its weeps,
my mind lets go its whirlwinds of debate,
as does my body all its tensions’ weight.
It’s like a coming home, a warm redoubt
among the quanta blinking in and out.
Change Pace Poetry 28:
Deerstalker
Deerstalker hats, with “visors” front and back,
their ear flaps down and tied beneath your chin,
protect you from the snapped-back branch’s thwack.
But not, of course, the Lyme tick — which crawls in
your clothing, finds a moist warm spot to bite,
and dines all night at bloody Bulls’ Eye Inn.
If lucky you may quickly find the site,
the swollen, angry, sweaty ring on ring,
all red, and blue, and white — it’s quite a sight.
Thus, while you thought you’d stalk the deer this spring,
you’re in E R, and sputtering in terror,
caught up by Mother Nature in a sting.
That handsome Rack: The heart of its wild wearer
you understand in ways quite new to you.
You wonder which of you stalks Earth the barer.
A Farmer Mom Advises Mary-Lynn
Raleigh, North Carolina.
In memory of Jean.
“Your youngster likes to draw, and read, and play
with words and rhymes,” the teacher told me when
we met a quarter hour on conference day.
As though I didn’t know at all my ten
year old! She said she’d like to “bring him out,
so he’d grow up a man among real men.”
I wondered had she drunk straight from the spout
too much corn liquor? But I held my tongue.
No use to bicker. And, I had no doubt
she wanted common sense — just mouthing dung
and shoveling out an educator’s bin.
What’s more, she was, as they all are, so young!
I stood — her eyes went wide — said, “Mary-Lynn,
don’t try to bring my youngster ‘out’ unless
you know for sure how you’ll put him back ‘in’.”
Fugitive Sensation
In memory of L.S.J.
Another astral visit with my dad?
I do believe it, though my mind revolts
against what senses don’t make “iron-clad.”
His presence — warmth of feeling — ups the volts
my wet-wired heart’s ’lectronics will accept
(I fancy I could handle thunderbolts) . . . .
Despite the light of sun I intercept
by sight, plus hearing, smell, and touch and taste,
in none of these am I, in truth, adept.
My eyes are blind (such energies they waste)
to infrared and ultraviolet —
an X-ray’s sine wave they have never traced.
Negate these rays on vision’s bayonet?
Impale those force-fields that, in magnets, live
unseen except in iron filings’ fret?
Filings, informed, become informative
with “mystic” forces quite olympiad —
although to plain sense they seem fugitive.
Fugitive, too, this visit with my dad:
I wake, informed by our great universe —
complete — another want I cannot add.
Change Pace Poetry 27:
Crumpled Wrappers
In memory of L.S.J.
Mid-summer, Mom and Dad trained out to ber-ry —
to Oklahoma, where they’d lived when kids —
the place they went was called a “cemetery.”
I easily pictured those quick katydids
that sang and leaped from skinny pyramids.
I didn’t know that blue-ber-ries turned blue
or black-ber-ries turned purple-black, there, too.
Then Mom came home, alone. We were so sad . . . .
On Christmas Day, I searched against all hope
the crumpled wrappers — green, red, blue, and plaid —
that filled the cardboard box bound up in rope
our Oklahoma kin sent us. Big Dope!
I guessed that Dad, at ber-ry-ing, was slow . . . .
I couldn’t figure it. I felt so low.
A Day in July
In memory of E.T.P.
At five p.m. this afternoon
I mark the years, now sixty-eight,
since I thrust out that moist cocoon
to lift my lungs and aspirate,
amidst the arid cold, your scents,
to glimpse first outlines of your face,
enjoy your breasts’ warm succulence,
and claim your voice and heartbeat’s pace.
We never cut a double cake
or sang a song to your great pluck
or gave you gifts for my birth’s sake
or helped you clean the party’s muck —
or recognized ourselves as boors —
as though my birth days were not yours.
Daybreak Nets the Artist’s Work
To spin her world, the spider jettisons
the fear she spills her guts in foolishness.
She’ll spinnaker on a faithless wind, no less,
to anchor her web for Evening Orisons.
She spins and spins. Her garden row outruns
its night while cold and dampness coalesce
to celebrate her web’s widespread finesse —
at cockcrow countless dewdrops glisten suns.
Change Pace Poetry 24:
Poems of Youth
Brand New Stepbrother
Cottage by the Jetty, Venice, Florida. Summer.
In memory of G.F.P. For R.P.T. and B.R.T.
No doubt I bugged you, overplayed
my hand in quiet I’d invaded.
I’d finished second, you eighth grade
at a military school you hated.
A hatchet in your upraised hand,
a hoop and holler on your tongue,
you chased me barefoot in the sand
around the yard — you were “high-strung.”
Out fishing off the Venice Jetty
you caught a hook’s barb in your calf.
You told us as we spooned spaghetti:
“Pushed through, barb snipped, backed out.” Wry laugh.
As I slurped sauce, I first could feel
a warmth for you in your ordeal.
Boy Soprano
(On tour with the Christ School Choir
in the mountains of North Carolina.)
While still a child, a cherubic chap,
he used to love to sing legato,
to feel the gentle woodwinds wrap
his soul in the warmest obbligato.
An old boy said, “Quick, make a will,
and find a razor-sharp stiletto.
Your fans will always feel that thrill
when you lift up your sweet falsetto.”
He thought he’d sleep a while on that —
until his voice cracked on librettos
in a distant city where they spat
at kids no longer amorettos.
He’d neither will, nor knife, nor choice —
thirteen — too late to choose castrato.
But allegro heart and basso voice
swept up the girls! Enamorato!
Big Beef
Time was, in Florida, the land of palms,
a kid 15 could drive without big qualms
so I’d no fear the cops would bring me grief —
accelerating social life! No beef.
The telephone — that was the big thing then
that struck the fear of God in me, ’cause when
I picked the phone up, called to make a date,
my lungs would fail me. I would suffocate.
“The number, please?” the operator drawled.
I, red in face, would sputter it, appalled
that she should have to know my business, too —
on top of both our parents. Good God! Whew!
The dialing telephone rolled down to four
from five the curious grownups we forbore,
which helped, although it introduced a new
confusion — what it was, I had no clue . . . .
Past college, when I did my income taxes
it whacked me like a pair of two-edged axes
aside the head — the numbers, they went wrong
’cause I’m dyslexic! Been so all along!
That helped explain the numbers I mis-dialed,
the lousy D, in calculus, I filed . . . .
And worse, when dials went digital, they turned
their keypads upside down! I really burned.
Big Beef? The phone surmounts them all, page one.
I used to picture Hell a place to shun —
Congressional debate the sole exchange —
but now, I muse, just dialing would derange . . . .
Change Pace Poetry 22:
Two Triolets and a Terza Rima
A quick take on Pappus, Collectio, Book VIII, Prop. 10, Sec. XI.
“Sure. Give me where to stand. I’ll move the earth,”
said Archimedes, searching for a bar
to prize it with . . . . “Said what? And not in mirth?
Sure? ‘Give me where to stand, I’ll move the earth . . . ’?
How place a lever against her spinning girth?
Who, me? Said that? Uh . . . . Wine, please. Red. A jar!
‘Sure! Give me where to stand, I’ll move the earth’,”
said Archimedes, hitching stool to bar.
Kingdom Lies
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, 7:10,
7:15, 8:1 (reading between the lines).
“Get fresh new ears? And eyes? And listen? See
the Kingdom? — Lies . . . ! Within you,” the Teacher said,
“there is no sin. It’s your diablerie
(get fresh new ears and eyes, and listen, see?)
when, like a Pharisee or Sadducee,
you love your things, your power, laws long dead . . . .
Get fresh new ears and eyes. And — listen! See,
the Kingdom lies within you!” the Teacher said.
Art School Student Waiter’s Surmise
“One table, seating eight.” The voice, a blare,
a bark accustomed to command, rolled in
on snow’s white glare — on waves of frigid air.
Four kids marched in, each like a mannequin,
the youngest last — she clutching Mother’s slacks —
then Grandma, Grandpa, and Mister Discipline.
The elders’ water-view of Halifax,
their kid, their grand-kids — none held their attention.
They eyed each other’s eyes . . . . They grieve lost wax?
Change Pace Poetry 21:
Short Poems in Rhyme Royal
Boiler Man
Winter, Christ School, Fifth Cottage, in the mountains
south of Asheville, North Carolina.
He shut his eyes — a happy lad.
Slow warmth suffused his back porch bed.
Boiler men’s lives were not so bad!
He’d won, fifth form, the thoroughbred
of boilers ’cause he’d kept his head
on lesser jobs — pulled clinkers small,
flushed water feeds, punched tubes and all . . . .
He woke . . . . Could not evoke the dream
that stirred him with such urgency.
Was two A.M., said watch hands’ gleam.
He stretched — was snug as could be,
but couldn’t shake himself quite free
a pressing sense that he must rise.
Some dopey dream! He closed his eyes.
How cold was it? He clawed his nails
against the poncho’s underside
and scraped off ice like soft fish scales.
He tossed. Such restlessness! He sighed.
He grabbed his flashlight for a guide,
slid loafers on, strode through the door
and stepped upon a creaking floor.
The strongest scent of turpentine
pervaded bath and cottage hall!
So hot! A chill went up his spine.
He squatted, palmed the floor and wall.
Hot floor? His dream! A psychic call?
He strode outside and hung a left.
The cellar door was stuck. More heft!
He kicked it open. A dim red glow!
White vapor — turpentine — flowed out
across his flashlight’s feeble throw:
He fought against an instant doubt —
a light-switch spark? Another route?
What if the time it took to wake
eight sleepers up’s too much to take?
He flipped the switch. Two bulbs went on.
In their dim light he just could see
the whole surreal phenomenon
(his last year’s job) — the big Square D
cut-off, on the coal bin’s post, should be
there still, behind that old Mae West.
With fresh night air he filled his chest.
Halfway across the packed-clay floor
he tripped and sprawled and spilled his air.
He gasped for breath, spit clay, and swore.
Back on his feet, he gripped the Square
D cut-off — yanked it with a prayer . . . .
Thank God we didn’t blow sky high!
He dropped to the clay’s fresh air supply.
On hands and knees, with worm’s eye view
he thanked the stoker’s dying whine.
He gazed — while the fire box door changed hue
from bright orange-red’s near-molten shine
to graying blue’s most welcome sign . . . .
Three giant pine knots in a beam
dripped pitch on it — sizzling to steam.
Do No Harm
If doctors and their drug firms’ chemists took
the meds their ads urge you and me to take —
with sotto voce warnings that we look
for morbid side effects (our heads may ache,
sclerotic livers fail, heart rhythms quake,
and bowels run on while stomachs chuck food up) —
they would, no doubt, beg for the hemlock cup.
A Common Wealth
Impassioned in their cast iron girdle,
blue flames leap up from orange-white coals
supplied by logs in our small Jøtul.
The hydrocarbons of split boles
illumine our Creation’s poles:
E=MC² fires stars —
and each heart’s cherished repertoires.
Change Pace Poetry 20:
Short Poems in Rhyme Royal
All Belly-up to Warmth
Belly-Up?
We humans genuflect, or kneel, or bow,
while lots of mammals roll upon the back
to show submission, offering a “Ciao.”
Each trusts his god will cut a little slack.
But we defend our gut-heart’s bric-a-brac
with mental plaque, well-thickened in the skull,
impeding our faint bent to feel, and mull . . . .
Construing Oxbow Veins
The youngster’s fingers reach to know his world,
grasp at the back of Grandpa’s hand, construe
its blue-black oxbow veins, all looped and swirled.
The veins, like earthworms, play a peek-a-boo
beneath the skin when ironed out of view.
He lays one ear against the gray-haired chest,
eyes flashing, “You’ve got thump-thumps, like I guessed!”
Quanta, Quanta, Quanta
Zucchini, snap beans, celery, romaine
chopped up, plus parsley finely minced (all dressed
in olive oil with lemon squeezings) reign —
detoxify the throb that’s in my chest,
my three-fold brain, and organs with less zest.
Now, for those heart-mind marvels more sublime,
ponder the Zero Point Field paradigm . . . .
And a Loaf Still Warm
By what mysterious means is it I dream?
How keep, with my deceased, a rendezvous?
Could astral travel zipped by quark or beam
or quantum flash across our cosmic blue
through “Zero Point Field” be the avenue?
My heart is famished . . . would break astral bread
with warm familiars who’ve so long been — dead?
Cobbler’s Bench
For S.J.E., and remembering Mumbo.
A coffee-table now, this cobbler’s bench
complete with tools has creaked here many years
and gathered dust — and thirst it cannot quench.
It thirsts to end the idle talk it hears,
to feel the thundering hammer it reveres,
its cobbler astride it soling on its last
and sewing up loose tongues so each holds fast.
Breaking News
With thanks to William Carlos Williams.
Fully to feel the trembling earth beneath
the feet and trunks of elephants that grieve,
one must be tree — uprooted, splintered: wreath.
A man (not tree, not elephant), I weave
iconic thoughts around my loss, retrieve
what rationalizations come to mind,
and uproot nothing habit has enshrined.
Exhausted by the hurricane’s long sweep
of wind and rain (which thrashed as though malign
and quaked my wood-frame house built on the cheap)
I drowsed, then slept, ’til scent — like turpentine —
aroused me from a long dream’s anodyne.
I rose, looked out. There yawned a six-foot ball
of pitch-filled pine roots, each a dripping awl.
Via stone, laid three feet thick, and centuries old
with sweet incense, I dodged the dog days’ street,
left Sirius at the door where he patrolled . . . .
I focused on my heart’s deep rhythmic beat,
let go my mind-games’ chattering deceit,
and in Medieval stone’s dark flying arcs
hugged close our Zero Point Field’s quanta sparks.
I thirst and hunger for the breaking news
in all the poems I read — and those I write.
True news heaves heart and mind in hand, and slews
me, dizzy, toward new cliff-sides, dark, and light,
that freshly charge my blood’s electrolyte.
The body’s ions — on them I am dependent —
divulge, in time, our Intimate Transcendent.
Change Pace Poetry 19: Short Rhyming
Poems in Narrative Couplets
Father of the Groom
In memory of G.M.P.
Our parents like each other, get so high
my Mom insists that Papa let her tie
on him his gram’s old yellowed linen bonnet
(sometimes “the moment” seems to be right on it).
Genetics sculpted his bones with his gram’s.
He glances at his grandma’s portrait, hams
it up, and he could take her place in gilt
above the fireplace, hanging at a lilt.
Hook and Ladder
A siren blares. The yellow light goes red.
The giant firehouse door glides overhead.
A gleaming lemon hook and ladder truck
roars out and bears strong men of ready pluck,
especially him who rides up high and steers
its great rear wheels. Thus, easily it veers
round corners far too tight for its great length.
It rears its ladder built with so much strength
it bears all hoses, firemen, and those folks
they pluck from flames to smoky shoulders’ yokes!
Ingenious device! I would I had
some such to fetch down night dreams’ ski-high chad.
Their message-bearing snow-mites past recall
on waking — tongues all rhyming — so enthrall
me that I doze again to listen. More!
But I can’t ever turn that corridor
of archetypal images and speech
I left, and now so much would like to reach.
If only I’d a psychic hook and ladder
to steer, to pluck . . . . But would I be the gladder?
All One Has
For G.K.J., who holds that
art is not a competitive sport.
One’s character is all
one has, and it grows tall
against all droughts with a taproot
burlap cannot wrap.
One’s character’s revealed
in action one’s concealed
from ogling eyes’ cold praise,
from klieg lights’ hazy rays.
(The public will accept
clichés, and is adept
at avoiding deeper feeling —
although it thirsts for healing . . . .)
When unobserved, and free,
what does one do to see,
to be, make tangible
a hidden life that’s full?
To find and do that thing
emboldens one to sing —
art’s character impart,
its taproot got by heart.
Change Pace Poetry 18 Short Rhyming Poems
Potter
For G.K.J.
Escaping the glaring sun, the heat's ennui,
his soul mate -- forty-three years plus -- and he
explore The Shed to replace mugs they'd lost.
Nearby, two droning, throbbing fans exhaust
the shed-bound, moist, and fragrant earthy smell
of drying work five potters soon will sell.
They each move slowly, carefully appraise
a little vase that shines in a slate-gray glaze:
"Nasturtium nosegays would look nice in this,"
she says. He now recalls how she finds bliss
in hardy gentle flowers she re-seeds
each spring in barren clay, and gladly weeds.
She steps behind a potter at her wheel
who trims a bowl and adds more eye-appeal.
He sees, within his soul mate's eager eyes,
a thirsting ardor she would minimize --
it's clear they shop not for a mug or vase
but with a purer need she must embrace:
She has a yen to shape soft silicate,
extract from it what may authenticate
her gift for comely, strong design -- that stole
she wears which births and clothes her maker's soul,
gives thanks for every free-form gift of mud,
and consummates her clay-self's trial by blood.
Force Fields Elevate the Feeling
"Life is always insipid to those who have no great
work in hand to elevate the feeling."
-- Horace Bushnell, 1802-1876.
These iron filings strewing paper plate
show horseshoe magnets can intoxicate
by means of force fields we can't see or touch --
make dance what otherwise just isn't much.
So by what force fields can we shift to drive,
get rolling toward what each most needs to thrive,
by indirection new directions find
and lift tired bodies free of the wearing grind?
A horseshoe magnet's but a bar that's bent.
Opposing valences can both present
unseen their force field's ambiguity:
adverse yet patterned tugs of high esprit.
We humans are like filings -- or drawn wires
that wrap round armatures -- without desires
'til negatives and positives we face
en-god in us the strength of their embrace.
Astral Traveler
In memory of L.S.J.
A young familiar fell in stride
within an airport concourse I'd
not walked, not ever seen, before.
He spoke. I felt a warm rapport
(a gift for which I'd no account)
and as we walked, it seemed to mount.
A banquet table set for eight:
We'd no desire to circulate,
so took two chairs. He chose my left.
He said, his words and tone quite deft,
"Do tell me all about your work.
And fully -- nothing wholly shirk."
So warm an interest is most rare
and freed my limbic mind from care.
But waking brought that to an end . . . .
I worried, lest my closest friend
(who else could have concern so pastoral?)
was on his last flight out, in astral.
I called. It was not he, thank heaven.
But who, then, visited, brought leaven
and warmth to this old lump of dough?
Whose heart and mind, in talk's free flow,
could make me feel so boundless -- glad . . . ?
I know! He was my died-young dad!
Change Pace Poetry 17: Against All Odds
Against All Odds
Early September.
Oklahoma City to Memphis via The Rock Island Rocket.
Memphis to Asheville via Southern Railroad.
The upper berth lurched hard from side to side.
Her wheels of steel -- click-clack, click-clack astride
her groaning rails and ties, their changing pitch,
that syncopation past a side-rail switch --
would normally have zonked him out at once,
except he feared that he'd be made class dunce.
Suppose they would not hold the seven-ten
departure, Memphis-bound-for-Asheville, when
the Rock Island Rocket ran a little late?
They said they would, but what if they'd not wait?
He'd miss the Old Boys' Deadline -- be a chump!
The thought turned his whole throat into a lump . . . .
First off the platform, he inquired, "The train
for Asheville?" "Sonny, there she rolls. Retain
your ticket. It is good tomorrow too."
He lurched his suitcase up, and sprinting, drew
abreast the last car's Lookout post and rail,
scrambled down concrete steps -- he dared not fail!
Again he breasted the Lookout post, rail, stair,
grabbed the post, vaulted bag and butt through air,
and landed, teetering. He crawled up-tread,
stood rocking, guts and knees like gingerbread.
The door: locked tight! What could he do? Good Lord!
Up high, "Emergency!" He pulled the cord.
Shrieking, the train stopped dead. Look, men with bags
raced by, their footfalls crunching clinker slags.
He jumped down, ran, caught up, and with them climbed
up through the diner's elevator (slimed
with swill from stinking barrels he pushed by),
and passed a black-faced cook with a knowing eye.
Pretending calm he bumped his bag up-aisle.
"Not taken," said a kid his age (thin smile).
"Oh. Thanks." He gasped for breath, his thudding heart
impatient now to see the train depart
lest someone find him out -- throw him in jail --
and who in Memphis would, for him, pay bail?
"You're really out of breath!" this Thin Smile said.
He nodded, "Out of shape." His face burned red.
He wedged his ticket in the front seat' back,
reclined, eyes closed, and lay upon the rack
of his anxiety until he felt
a forward lurch. His fear began to melt . . . .
Steel wheels and rails were singing when he woke.
A stub, no ticket, wedged the seat back's yoke.
(Thin Smile gazed out, his head against the glass.)
The mountains heaved in view, in greening mass,
and singing wheels on rails dropped down in pitch.
He stretched his forearm, kneading out a twitch.
Thin Smile turned great brown eyes toward him and grinned.
"While you were sleeping, this man -- double-chinned --
stopped by to thank you, left his card for you.
Some lawyer, lives in Asheville, well-to-do."
"Thanked me? For what?" "He said that you would know.
Said twice, 'Magnifico! Magnifico!'"
Thin Smile was chuckling, grinning ear to ear.
"I watched you panting, glimpsed a touch of fear,
observed you didn't want to talk at all.
No cobbler, I'd not twist a sharpened awl
to tap your guts, for curiosity --
you had to catch your breath. I let you be.
"The lawyer, while you slept, described the scene --
said several men agreed they'd never seen
determination like your own to catch
this train -- bold action which alone could snatch
a lost day back they thought was down the drain.
They all send "Thanks!" for helping them entrain . . . .
"What was it drove you on, against all odds?"
"Still greater odds! Drove me like piston rods!
I'm going back to boarding school, you see.
If I were late, I'd dig a stump, a tree
in fact, before I could return to sports.
I'd be class dunce, and off the tennis courts."
"You don't say! That's not Christ School? Could it be?"
"None other. What? You got telepathy?"
"I'm going there -- read all about that stump
a really big dumb screw-up makes you hump."
"Well! -- let me welcome you. Name's Jamieson."
They shook hands, soberly. "Mine's Bateyson."
Daybreak Nets the Artist's Work
To spin her world, the spider jettisons
the fear she spills her guts in foolishness.
She'll spinnaker on a faithless wind, no less,
to anchor her web for Evening Orisons.
She spins and spins. Her garden row outruns
its night while cold and dampness coalesce
to celebrate her web's widespread finesse --
at cockcrow countless dewdrops glisten suns.
Struck from Lightning
My grand-kids scuff the rug for pinprick bolts
of lightning they can finger-zap on skin --
then giggle when I'm jolted by their volts.
These quanta, of non-local origin,
convey a metaphysical "within,"
illumine mirth in everything absurd --
electrify the heart of this old bird.
Cooling Off with Cayenne
Whose was that deep male voice he just
could hear beneath his study floor?
So late! Who was the neighbor thrust
himself on her at their front door?
Best he step down and rescue her
so she can get some sleep tonight.
Pretext? He'll raid the fridge! Yes-sir!
He clumps downstairs to get a bite.
The voice? Astonishing! Their son's!
How could he not have recognized
their flesh and blood, who now outruns
his ears and holds them mesmerized?
The voice breaks -- up: a child's again . . . .
Now, where'd he stash that fresh cayenne?
Tent of Snorers
I leave my bathhouse clogs outside the tent,
unzip, re-zip the screen, but mutely sigh,
come three o'clock, and thrash in discontent
that sunrise takes so long to paint the sky.
No dream, no nightmare graces open eye,
redeems this time with creativity --
unless it is revealing just to be.
A Modest Hope
Two spotted goats, one brown, one mostly black,
chomp grass in this abandoned burial plot.
They nuzzle round each flat-laid granite plaque,
and take great care (as grounds-keeps who're well-taught)
with bone-bound longings wasting now in rot . . . .
Goats' rancid exhalations -- might it be? --
may spring some unrequited spirits free.
Archimedes' Second Thoughts
A quick take on Pappus, Collectio, Book VIII, Prop. 10, Sec. XI.
"Sure. Give me where to stand. I'll move the earth,"
said Archimedes, searching for a bar
to prize it with . . . . "Said what? And not in mirth?
Sure? 'Give me where to stand, I'll move the earth . . . '?
How place a lever against her spinning girth?
Who, me? Said that? Uh . . . . Wine, please. Red. A jar!
'Sure! Give me where to stand, I'll move the earthï',"
said Archimedes, hitching stool to bar.
That Elixir
He'd hugged her gently in their puppy love,
which felt like it was more than mere romance,
while brightest sunshine graced her most white glove . . . .
Some say that marriage is a hostage-dance:
The taker and the taken in a trance
exchange their masks. Within, they each grow ashen
in search of that elixir called compassion.
In the Crowd at the Big H
I spy them, each in boots and jeans,
calico shirts and cowboy hats,
just barely out of their own teens
waving off horseflies and the gnats.
Among these thousands just like them,
4-H-ers come to show, or see,
Blue-Ribboned livestock, each a gem --
what draws my eye? Not his goatee.
They amble, his hand on her nape --
not a caress. Then, what? A check?
He steer her? Lest she bolt, escape?
One clasps a bottle by the neck,
a woman friend by hand or waist . . . .
Or is she livestock he has aced?
A Farmer Mom Advises Mary-Lynn
Raleigh, North Carolina.
In memory of Jean.
"Your youngster likes to draw, and read, and play
with words and rhymes," the teacher told me when
we met a quarter hour on conference day.
As though I didn't know at all my ten
year old! She said she'd like to "bring him out,
so he'd grow up a man among real men."
I wondered had she drunk straight from the spout
too much corn liquor? But I held my tongue.
No use to bicker. And, I had no doubt
she wanted common sense -- just mouthing dung
and shoveling out an educator's bin.
What's more, she was, as they all are, so young!
I stood -- her eyes went wide -- said, "Mary-Lynn,
don't try to bring my youngster 'out' unless
you know for sure how you'll put him back 'in'."
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