Earendel

Earendel

                                    Earendel Modern poetry  modern verse contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem This morning star exploded in the dark Of ancient space, exploded, formed and shone Before the orbs that we have known, a...

Truth

              Truth He feels the unity of everything, A moment as eternity unchanged By being brief.  This loneliness on wing Is also fullness, emptiness arranged As richness in a vision sent along Wide valleys.  It is like a breathing out That is a breathing in; a...

Sempiternity

           Sempiternity Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The chambered nautilus goes pulsing through Dark depths.  It pulses underneath the waves For eons rocking gently, steady, true Enough to last. ...

Recollections

                Recollections Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem Dawn comes and wakens up inside my core The reminiscences that sleep inside The past, that sleep there, stowed subconscious lore That...

Shifting Knowledge

         Shifting Knowledge   “Know thyself” ~ the temple at Delphi The earth is slowing down its turning on Its axis; so it seems, at least.  The tides Have been impeding spinning since the dawn Of oceans and the sphere.  Our planet rides Through vastest vacuum of...

Declines and Declining

   Declines and Declining Modern poetry  modern verse  contemporary poetry  contemporary verse  modern poem  contemporary poem The wood that makes the icons’ boxes lacks The holiness that throbs, still, through these saints And sacred ones.  Despite the inner cracks...

Initiations

                Initiations “Every word was once a poem” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, “The Poet” “A single letter was a matter of life and death.”  ~ Anne Michaels The alphabets came late, like virgins to A wedding feast.  The clauses, words, and grunts Of love were...

The Cape

               The Cape Consider what the cape desires.  It wants to see The clouds of birds that used to fly above It in their immemorial paths, sea And sea and sea beneath their search for love And nestlings.  Cape  Canaveral wants the white And white and white...

Backside Gas in that Jar Called Yale

Backside Gas in that Jar Called Yale One Harold Bloom says modern verse began In 1890—or about then.  That Is what one venerating friend claims.  Can That be?  Only an academic prat Could be so arrogant and blinkered.  I Say modern verse began at least as far Back...

Earl Grey in Old Imari Porcelain

Earl Grey in Old Imari Porcelain He could have stayed behind his desk.  He could Have signed stock-trading bonds.  He could have stayed Not writing symphonies.  Each night he would Have travelled home to comfort.  Hubert strayed. He could have travelled home each...

Death Defied in the British Library

Death Defied in the British Library I sit across from Wayne, but decades on And much improved.  Not only young again, But cuter nose, and lips more cushion drawn, More velvet-shaped—too lovely, these, to deign To pray or sing a Sabbath verse.  The hair Is lovely,...

Void

                    Void What gives the Easter Island statues worth? Their meaning is beyond us.  Since the faith That raised them died, is it their height, or girth, Or weight, or eeriness?  Each stony wraith Of that religion is so foreign to Us now that it is less...

Hollow Splendor

         Hollow Splendor The hollow Easter bunnies and hollow Metallic, glossy Easter eggs in foil Are brownly easy enough to swallow, Milk chocolate being what it is.  Smooth voile On tongue, as light and pleasant to the taste, They seem to be denials of the thing...

           Hollow Splendor The hollow Easter bunnies and hollow Metallic, glossy Easter eggs in foil Are brownly easy enough to swallow, Milk chocolate being what it is.  Smooth voile On tongue, as light and pleasant to the taste, They seem to be denials of the thing...

Did They Have Names?

    Did They Have Names? “Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.”   Was Solutrean man acquainted with The leaf-shaped feel of love, the stylized form Of flint-hard hatred?  Or did the megalith Of fear rule over all, as if a storm Outside the lipless mouth parts...