To define a nameless haunting: what would you call the feeling of loss, on finding out only now, a grandpa’s span later, about ‘a skeleton of my granny’? To learn a thing that, as a child of the seventies, passed by: how people wanted rock and roll so much, that lacking vinyl platters, they recorded…
Tag: Stroll of Poets
Day 22: Crayons and Other Fictions, or Metonymy of Mangoes
Those were the Tang-bright 70s, the Revello days knees grazed, skies so high and hazy with bonfire smoke – Who was that kid? the one who stuck things up his nose and roasted his wieners with the plastic skins still on just to see them shrivel. They were summer people dragged West with grandparents until…
Day 19: Constant/Transient/Permanent
from the bee wing to the soul comes a thrum, at once low and above the mind line, fine and high, lime-bright tingle of song, shimmer on the lake of attention breath of trees, yellow from the pine arms to the sun a cloud rolls: that’s my love of a season, windborne marked by fragrant…
Day 16: Dystopic Diagram
O thou dystopic diagram of shadows wherein we see the frame of us and hunt the breakage. Where wert thou hidden, method and artifact, before she birthed and named you? On the precise edge of language changing from reverent cases and declensions to scientific lists, and as if to mark that cross-road between French élan…
Day 15: Archeology of a Last Nerve
pull the trigger breach the dam bury the evidence we have the means, the stories, the blind need to misconstrue through archeology anything at all, create an arc of time and culture or an ark divine, in whose boots to tremble heebie-jeebie monkeys that we are. drop the rock breach the dame blaze on past…
Day 2: not taken
speak to me in must of grain-bins that willow hand left trailing, strums the fence. i never thought you’d go. same old well-trodden heartlines i chased you down a dusty driveway to tell you goodbye. you stood blinking hands full of watercans. i was leaving for the world, and you just trod on homeward. is…
Day 1: Before and After
30/30 is Back! This year, once again, the Stroll of Poets are one of a growing number of groups celebrating Poetry Month by playing 30/30 – the Challenge: write a poem a day for 30 days. DO try this at home! Here’s my first. if it is woven of anything this world is not stardust…
Guest Post: Integration, Glosa by Don Perkins
My longtime poetry collaborator Don Perkins is part of a group doing a poetry challenge this winter. I’m chuffed to bits that he chose to riff off a poem of mine for this piece. Don was also kind enough to record a reading of ‘Integration’ for us to enjoy, here: And here’s the text, showing…
Day 30: blue toothed
night replies, she’s examining oceans, their toothéd blue hunger for land come plamu’g come sea wolf come pu’tupaq come gulls ask the ocean where to find her, ocean answers, trace the river come chejauk come heron come amisk come ti’amug in lace of willows at river’s wrist she twists the strands was, is, will be…
Day 29: silence of violins
violins poised for the lift conductor’s baton there are birds in trees, and seas full of fish obedient night sings cellos tympanic moon on high this moment wakeful pray your small verse then listen for the One. Today’s image courtesy of ADD on pixabay.com
Day 28: Could Have Been
once tropical this northern city once underwater this broad prairie once seasonal this could have been the way of it still we do not know all the words to this song. Edmonton’s Geological History Today’s image from Norman Bosworth on pixabay.com
Day 27: altered state
presuppose steady state add sparrowsong, wild gold shaking the tree steady ocean must be stirred, add moon and to dark winter a slice of lemon easterly pull the sun north over the river steady breathing add whistling cranes their victory song calligraphed from one end of vision to the other space hearts such that light…
Prairiepomes 