Little Guy's First Birthday

My grandson is completing his twelfth month in the world pretty soon.  So I wrote about him this month.  He is a compact person, though tall and robust for his age.  The form of this poem is very compact and demanding, in tri-meter with five hard rhymes.  Little Guy expects a lot, but he earns it.

The Wisdom of Infancy

I want to find you wise

But there’s still time for that

And maybe you know well

Behind your wide young eyes

What I should seek in you

Whom my sweet girl begat

And how your joy will tell

Me what I really know

Or don’t and gently show

What won’t and what will do

Contrails

I have been jogging in the Washington Park Arboretum most weekday mornings since the social distancing suggestions were introduced.  The Arboretum is pleasant, especially in the morning, with wide paths, some paved, some not, and consistent maintenance.  The width of the paths and roads is important, of course, to allow safe passage of pedestrians, joggers and bicyclists going about their mornings.  There is a friendly intimacy to calculating approaches to maximize distance, and to avoid leaving exhaled droplets airborne for others to encounter.  Hope, care, and bodily fluids among strangers.

Contrails

 

Inside her smile it is her breath

That may be poison, virulent,

And so I cut hard right across the trail

Returning her kind look and cheating death

In this light moment as we jog and cross.

I worry for the cloud of where I went.

Before we passed the droplets fail

To fall I fear and scatter in the air

Across her path. It can’t be right to share

With her so damp a truth, such loss.

A Love Poem for May

The new poem for May goes out into the box tonight.  I make no effort to make the poems fit into current events, or the holiday schedule. I write them the month before they appear, so they are whatever I'm thinking about that month. Nothing in particular suggests that I should write in Middle English in March. 

The world is convulsed with the pandemic as I write this, but a couple of weeks ago I found a Carl Sandburg poem with an interesting form, so I make a love poem from it.  Love is a cause and cure for some convulsions.  More may be required this time.


Lovely



  The damp and softened earth is lovely here,

As unseen enterprise is opened to the air

By the sharp hiss of the blade to the earth.



  Sunbits and shadow are lovely under the oak,

Tossed like a thousand dice among the leaves,

Come to me alone with ancient light.



  This strong woman is lovely too—

With quiet breath and sweet spoor alive as

The rich warmth of just turned earth.

Little Guy

My recent poems have come from a mind and heart immersed in the joy of knowing our new grandson, also called Guy, and born 8 July 2019.  He is extraordinary, of course.  No, really.  He is joyful and active, quick to smile and responsive to attention.  

I wrote this poem in October of last year, when he was in his fourth month.  As my hearing deteriorates I was thinking about his, and wondering what I could do to enrich that part of his life.

Songmaker 

I will capture the noise of the world

For you and from it

I will sieve the urgent jaybird

And the mooning cow

Small dogs in their confusion

The lowing jet and wheezing bus

The knowing nearby voice of love

And from it I will find a song for you

To sing for me a song to rainbow

All you hear into a thing we share

With two beginnings and no end

A song of your discovery and

The noise of our amazement

Starting Up Again

The box on the corner is now in its 14th year--one new poem (at least) each month.  I haven't been using the blog for years, for a number of reasons.  I'm starting anew because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  It is not necessarily safe to be reaching into the box for a poem, as an average of 140 or so have each month, under the current circumstances.  So I have provided information on the exterior of the box to allow folks to find the poem here if they are interested to see what I have written.

The blog includes a beautiful watercolor of the box.  It is the work of Gabriel Campanario, the Seattle Sketcher, who publishes regularly in the Seattle Times.

This past month, as the seams of world order loosened, I was working at something completely unrelated.  A seasonal poem, with obvious inspiration from the Fascist poet Ezra Pound.  (Important poet, idiotic politics.)  Oh, well.  So one poem in two forms below:


Sōmer Ibēn Icŏmen



Hard-herted winter sōne passen

Ich ibēn wīnden mīn cōlden fāce

Thĕ air warmen whīle sŏmer ibēn icŏmen

Bēs and brĭddes taken to flīing

Bē fīnding flŏur, bĭrde fīnding bē



The softe sŏun of sŏmer ayēn-cŏming

Ich cŏnnen hēren this forest līves

Yŏng squireles behīnd mōder this night

Ich iben not mi-self al-ōn hēr



Rein softenen this păth

Mīn shō slīden adoun as ich clīmben this hil

Ich lōken bifōre face bifōre the wind

---


The Summer Nears



The hard-hearted winter will soon pass

I expose my cold face to the wind

The air is warming as summer nears

Birds and bees take flight

Bee finding flower, bird finding bee



The soft sounds of summer are returning

I can hear this living forest

Young squirrels follow their mothers at night

I am not alone here



Rain softens the trail

My feet slip as I climb the hill

I look forward with the wind

A New Approach

This blog has, over the past few years, published the poems that I have left in the corner box for the neighbors.  More people come by to take a paper copy than visit the blog each month, by a considerable margin, and I am comfortable in knowing that few, if any, will be disappointed that I am ceasing this mode of distribution.

Thanks to the dozens who read and commented on the poems in recent years!  I will continue to put new poems in the box on the corner.