by phillipw | Jun 16, 2021 | SY
Meditation In twilight times the balance in between The beauties of the sweet is tinged with dim Blue homage muting thoughts of sadder sheen. The weight of twilight fills the heart’s wide brim With happiness expressed with darker dreams. A color mild...
by phillipw | Jun 4, 2021 | AP, GR, MA, SP, SY
Accordingly The spirit of the peony is spring. The summer finds itself inside a rose. In May the petals, red and pink, both sing A colored fugue in fragrant ratios. The garden wings have gathered. Great tits leap As through the grandest canyon. Swooped...
by phillipw | Jun 3, 2021 | MU, PE, PY, SY, TC
Outside the Painted Cave Before men thought of poetry, they fell In love with paintings on a petal’s tongue. It started ringing in its silent bell So utter they could almost hear it. Swung From it came colors so much like a song They almost gave men melody, at...
by phillipw | Mar 29, 2021 | CO, MU, SO, SY
The Music for Saints’ Ears The snow is like two perfect music realms. It came in perfect purest notes as flakes All night and now the vision overwhelms. In dark it manifested white as lakes Turned first to ice, then covered with true white. High symphonies first...
by phillipw | Mar 4, 2021 | CA, SY, TR
Concealment or Revelation Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem If minds could play the instruments of mist, Sopranos sing the songs of unheard souls, And treble boys in choirs sing amethyst Magnificats,...
by phillipw | Mar 1, 2021 | GI, IL, ME, MU, PH, SY
lluminated Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The secret bird refuses to be known. Its color is a flavor still unnamed, More like a smell than scarlet, a tone, An oboe’s voice perhaps. It...
by phillipw | Feb 23, 2021 | DE, ET, SP, SY, TY, WA, WI
Wind and Water Cleave and Cleave Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem .. We know that wind is spirit life. The wind Is God in symbol, and the angels, too, And demons, angels with God’s demons twinned....
by phillipw | Dec 14, 2020 | LO, PA, RO, SE, SY
The Specifications of a Dream You know the list. It specifies the smell Of hope and fragrance of your long lost love, The scent of it in bed and thrusting swell Of pillowed lust. The list contains the shove Of fleshy colored passion and the taste, The scarlet taste,...
by phillipw | Nov 29, 2020 | CA, PR, ST, SY
Conjurors versus Christians The caves are sacred everywhere. Their dark Prepares us for epiphanies, obscure Pronouncements, and a sibilant remark Wrapped up in mystery. The caves immure The unimagined as on painted walls. The buoyant deer and horses floating...
by phillipw | Oct 23, 2020 | DI, FR, IN, LA, NI, PH, SY
Playing with Himself and the Piano Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Infernal Recurrence, more like. That Big Mind locked itself up in the bedroom of His hosts. A mad philosophical pig, He banged the...
by phillipw | Jul 5, 2020 | AN, ME, SY
Ancient Greek, Then Church Latin, Symposium, Scriptorium Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem “Readers of Greek poetry constituted an élite, as in the Middle Ages readers of Latin did.” ~ Michael...
by phillipw | Jun 13, 2020 | GE, RO, SY
Gentle Hermione Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Hermione is gentle and supreme, Is gentleness supreme herself. She spreads Her fragrance like ideals that, floating, stream Above blind Plato’s...
by phillipw | May 21, 2020 | BR, CO, MA, RA, SY
Musical Rightness in the Rare Books and Music Reading Room The space between his eyebrows is so wide It might contain nine symphonies, and all The works of Mozart, or the whole deep tide Of oceans that we label music. Tall Conceptions captured in long swelling bars...
by phillipw | May 18, 2020 | AN, GA, Ho, PO, SE, SY
Ancient Attic Porcelain; 80,000 Vases Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Those pieces made by potters of the Greeks In Attica alone in ancient times Give more than eighty thousand gorgeous peeks For us...
by phillipw | May 13, 2020 | AN, SY
This sonnet may offend some readers. If you think it might offend you, please do not read it. Out and About after an Evening of Swilling on Upper-Class Couches Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem The...
by phillipw | May 7, 2020 | BO, CY, GA, Ho, JE, LO, SY
How the Cypress Came to Be Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem Sylvanus loved the boy and gave a gift To Cyparissus, gave the boy a doe. He doted on it. Then the truest shift Occurred. Sylvanus killed it...
by phillipw | May 3, 2020 | AM, SY
Calculated Haze How modern is the notion that the pen And keyboards on machines should write out clear Communications? Ancients, writing men, Preferred elastic meanings. Like a wier Their words held back their welling meaning, deep, Or dark, or playful,...
by phillipw | Oct 13, 2019 | AU, CO, PA, SI, SY
Burdens of Light The silences of country life are more Like shades than sounds. So quiet that they seem Like pastel tints in watercolors or The light beneath acanthus leaves we dream. Those silences are more like mist at dawn Above a pond than like a lack...