Tag: Morning Poem

Dawn Seeks Her Mother

AndyLeave a comment

Aurora chains anchors to fear-wedded birds
and waits for us, for men, to cut them free.
To hack, with reactions! with acetylene words!
til the broken links are piled on the cast metal scree.
Those traditional limiters now lay piled beneath
among remnants of anciently crafted submission
and the new soaring daughters have been bequeathed
a future of dear, long-sought admission.
But the birds simply rest upon their dropped fetters,
having seen all their sisters fly off and alight
on prison bars set by their corporate betters
where they’ve left their false chains for pilloried heights.
They’ve rushed to what’s promised but can’t find the grace
in a barren, uncertain, un-mothered place.

 

The March of Rain

Andy1 Comment

Weekend postings are kind of, erm, weak, because nobody is at work. In other words, nobody is surfing the internet for hours, so you don’t get as many readers. I only get 5-10 visits on a weekday anyway, so I can’t get too hung up on details [barring the generosity of Gerard at American Digest (Don’t go, don’t click, whatever you do. You’ll hate it.), which can bring me 10x that many].

Interestingly, as I was typing this, I received a new follower. Thanks, Charly Priest at Crazy Life! Here’s a timely link for your timely follow. Looks like he writes poetry, and as I’ve always said: MOAR POWETREE. Like this, written over time, finished this morning in Starbucks after dropping off the Cherokee for some repairs:

The March of Rain

The Northwest rain has new weight this morning,
Each drop a long-shouted oath from the past.
Memories pool in the potholes
and around the leaf-clogged sewer drains.

The Arizona monsoons had extra anger.
A bridge-killing blitz of clandestine violence.
The tempestuous sentence that nonetheless
woke a torpid desert.
The smell was copper and dust –
fingers after counting the coin jar.

Different were the squalls of the Rockies.
An afternoon sky sunk to fearsome depths –
A swelling purple field over the foothills.
Thunderheads formed like squadrons of Zeros
that dropped their payload and moved on.
The blasted air all electricity and sage,
dispersing over the great plains to the East.

There were the thunderstorms of Illinois,
deliberate and grand.
Heralded by rumblings for hours
from the unknowable boundary of the prairie,
arrogant as an ancient army
behind the mandate of its gods.

The forested marches in the damp Carolinas.
A moment’s wet slumber under a strung poncho.
Soldiers pool in the foxholes
and around the mud-clogged mortar tubes.

 

 

What Just Happened?

Andy6 Comments

How does one go about celebrating one’s first publication? I say, I do it with lofty, rather British sounding English. I’m quite chuffed, and all that, even if it makes me sound a bit toff.

Dear Andy Havens,

Thank you for submitting to Fragments. We have decided to publish The Whole Sky, All at Once in this year’s edition. You will be invited to read/present your piece at a later date, this May. We look forward to seeing you there.

I’ve already made the obviously poor decision of wondering whether mine was the only submission, and that took some of the wind out of my sails (or took the piss, if I’m to stay on the British thing). But it’s an annual publication, so I have to believe that at least a few poems were dropped in the queue over the course of the submission period. I don’t know how long that period was, as I saw a notification for it just 2 days before it closed.

They have given me email addresses to contact concerning this whole thing, and I certainly will, what with that whole part about “read/present your piece.” Maybe I’ll do the ugly thing and ask how many other submissions there were. Maybe I’ll save myself the disappointment. I don’t know.

Here’s the big winner. It’s not the first time I’ve posted it here:

The Whole Sky, All at Once

You can’t look for the lightning
Dad said
or you’ll never see the flash.
He would pull the Buick out to the street
and we sat like crooked teeth
in the yawning maw of the garage.
A storm coming deliberately at us
and the tornado siren
wailing with a bored urgency
like the ambulance of the great plains.
We pulled over.

You can’t look for the lightning
Dad said
or you’ll always just miss it.
He would talk about seeing the whole sky
and we sat like crooked teeth
in the yawning maw of the garage.
We tried to look at nothing and everything
while the old corn across the street
whispered with a quickened urgency
like the dying secrets of the great plains.
We closed our ears.

You can’t look for the lightning
Dad said
or someone else will see it.

Tiny Giant

Andy3 Comments

I had a tiny body once
so often rapt with joy.
It turned the wheels of tiny bikes
and proclaimed “Here comes a boy!”

It left me bleeding once or twice
and bumped a thing or two
as I flew around this giant world
and learned to steer it true.

Everything that held the line
from getting all confused
was new and out in front of me
and replaced what I misused.

Now giant eyes have seen the world
but in glancing glance away
From the giant things I once beheld
but are tiny now today.