The luck continues...

2011 continues to be a good year for me... Verse Wisconsin has decided to publish another piece of poetry by yours truly. http://www.versewisconsin.org/  Northlawn will appear in a forthcoming issue, presumably in 2012 since they have just published issue no. 107 this week.(chek it out) Hopefully the good tidings carry over into next year. Coincidentally, my poetry group(which I will call Panoply until otherwise notified) will be publishing our book soon. Look for it by January 2012 at the latest. It is titled Portal and Piers. We also have started a blog by the name of Sunday Morning Press- This what we are using as a "publishing house. I have a link to it on this blog. The eventual hope is to be in a position to help publish not only more of our own stuff, either as a group or individually as well as others we feel are deserving and maybe do not have the knowledge, funds or support to do so themselves. We will most likely be selling the books from the SMP blog and/or Facebook links. It would make a great Christmas gift- if we can get it out by then. Only $10! I may even be able to get you a signed copy...

For now, I'll leave you with this;

Mosaic

I watch the treetops as they sway in the breeze

dancing freely, on a cool summer’s eve

the crickets sing their nighttime song

while one dog dutifully patrols the lawn

the other lay panting at my feet

glad for the reprieve from late summer heat

a purple and green mosaic fills my eye

night acting as canvas for the firefly

update...

2 out of 3 pieces sent to Upstreet have been rejected; Defined and The Ladder, still waiting to hear about Eclipse, as well as the poems sent to Adirondack Review and Verse Wisconsin. Still keeping my fingers crossed...

Defined

We live our lives

pressed together

between the pages

of a dictionary

placed here by some

odd coincidence of origin

our inked skin defines us

to one another, though

we still struggle to understand

the words being shouted

from this album left

resting on a high shelf

The Ladder

My wife watches from her post

on the porch as I disappear

into the garage, emerging

a few minutes later, after

some clanging and banging,

carrying a ladder.

A satisfied look settles

on her face, thinking

I am finally getting

to the honey- do list

left magnetized

to the refrigerator.

“What are you doing?”

She calls after me as I walk

to the middle of the yard, laying

the ladder in the un-mowed grass.

Sharp, deep green blades part to make way

for the aluminum rungs and rails.

Without answering, I stand back, admiring

the play of the sun off the gleaming metal

and the contrast of silver and green

before returning to my blue plastic chair

on the ray soaked patio, picking up

pencil and notebook once again. Intending

to write about the jaunty angle of the ladder.

Or, how unapparent it would be to any observer

as to which way is up and

which is down and where

one would be going anyways

that such a conveyance would be needed.

The re-imagined structure has become

as much a curiosity to me-

the creator as the hundreds

of bugs now crawling along it stiles.

Behind me I hear the opening

And closing of the back door.

sharing is caring

Billy Collins is my favorite poet, as I am sure he is many an aspiring poets favorite. He is the master of the everyday minutiae of simply living life. Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the United States. I want to share a few poems from Ballistics 2008.

The Idea of Natural History at Key West

When I happened to notice myself
walking naked past a wall-length mirror

one spring morning
in a house by the water
where a friend was letting me stay,

I looked like one of those silhouettes
that illustrate the evolution of man,

but not exactly the most recent figure.
I seemed to represent a more primitive stage,
maybe not the round-shouldered ape

dragging his knuckles on the ground,
but neither the fully upright hominoid

ready to put on a suit and head for the office.
Was it something in the slope of my brow
or my slack belly?

Was this the beginning of the Great Regression
as the anthropologists of tomorrow would call it?

I was never the smartest monkey on the block,
I thought to myself in the shower,
but I was at least advanced enough to be standing

under a cascade of steaming water,
and I did have enough curiosity to wonder
what the next outline in the sequence might look like:

the man of the future stepping forward
like the others rising to their hind legs behind him,

only with a longer stride, a more ample cranium,
and maybe a set of talons,
or a pair of useless, cherubic wings.

Divorce

Once, two spoons in bed,
now tined forks

across a granite table
and the knives they hired.

Ornithography

    The legendary Cang Jie was said to

    have invented writing after observing

    the tracks of birds

A light snow last night,

and now the earth falls open to a fresh page.

A highwind is breaking up the clouds,

children wait for the yellow bus in a huddle,

and under the feeder, some birds

are busy writing short stories,

poems and letters to their mothers.

A crow is working on an editorial.

That chickadee is etching a list,

and a robin walks back and forth

composing the opening to her autobiography.

All so prolific this morning,

these expressive little creatures,

and each with an alphabet of only two letters.

The Golden Years

All I do these drawn-out days

is sit in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge

where there are no pheasants to be seen

and, last time I looked, no ridge.

I could drive over to Quail Falls

and spend the day there playing bridge,

but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail

would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.

I knowawidow at Fox Run

and another with a condo at Smoky Ledge.

One of them smokes, and neither can run,

so I'll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.

Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge?

I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.