free verse

Winter Blanket

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 39 Comments

Winter Blanket

It was a blanket, no more.
Just four inches of snow, but even less
has had my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel
as winds off the lake buffeted my trailer
at the crest of the Skyway crossing the Buffalo River.

Winter, always my least favorite season
for driving. For any reason, really.
The weight of snow on the shovel.
The wind chill while checking out my unit.
Kicking tires covered in slush. Driving.

But this was just a blanket of snow,
still waiting to be plowed at nine in the morning,
already packed down by morning traffic.
Traffic I navigated as I pulled a short trailer
into an intersection that was a glaze of ice.

Making a wide left turn, I watched the cars
that watched as I passed to their left, watched
the drivers’ already wide eyes widen further.
My gaze shifted from the road to my left mirror
to see my trailer jackknifing to meet me.

Heart in my mouth, I spun the wheel to the right,
felt my tractor straighten out, tugging the trailer pin
that had been pushing me around. The relief
in the eyes of those other drivers was palpable,
their cars spared for another day’s winter drive.

I pulled over a short way down the road,
did a walk-around, checked out my unit,
and kicked the tires, more out of frustration
than for any safety check. Safely back in the cab,
I drove off as I enjoyed a picturesque winter scene.

I may miss Buffalo, but I don’t miss Buffalo winters.

This poem is my second response to Poetics: Connections, the prompt from Merril at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to about connecting or connections—in any sense. Merril cites the poetry of Mary Oliver as an example.

Before I retired, I drove for a trucking company in Buffalo, New York.  Buffalo is known for its winter weather, especially the lake effect storms that drop snow carried by the winds off of Lake Erie.  They made for some interesting experiences while driving a tractor/trailer (semi).

Shared with Open Link Night #2812: LIVE Edition

Reflection ~ with audio

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 26 Comments

 


Reflection

A slight nudge, and I leave shore.
Or do I? It follows me on either side
as my kayak moves along the stream,
witnessing each stroke of my paddle.

And the stream, for its part doubling
the presence of the shore with sycamore,
oak, and maple casting their light
in ripples cast from my bow.

I touch the water as a floating leaf
passes, or is it the passing shore I touch?
Could it be that it has been the shore,
and not the water, that has drawn me here?

The newly rippled image tells me it could be both.

This poem is my response to Poetics: Connections, the prompt from Merril at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to about connecting or connections—in any sense. Merril cites the poetry of Mary Oliver as an example.

Not Just Any Watch ~ with audio

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 43 Comments

 

Not Just Any Watch

This is not a timepiece held by just any man.
His later life an escape to simple times and the bottle,
it graced the pocket of your father’s jeans
and marked the hours as he worked by your side,
toiling in farm fields after your mother’s death.
And later, it measured the hours of tavern time
till we would pick him up and drive to Aunt Ginny’s,
his home in his last years far from those fields,
never recovering from his loss. Measuring
his life, short as it was, it passed to you,
its black shoestring of a watch chain lasting
even through the years it served you. It passed
from your hands to mine, a reminder
of the hard years of your youth, a witness
to the life you achieved through hours of hard work,
a testament to the power of time to heal.

This poem is my response to Poetics:Object Poems, the prompt from Mish at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to write a poem beginning with “This is not a ______” and centered around an every day object, sparing the details of the object and instead showing the connection that it has made or what it represents.

Image: the pocket watch that once belonged to my grandfather, and then my father.

Sedition Perdition

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 37 Comments

Sedition Perdition

Speaking to his acolytes, a petty tyrant wondered
how a set electorate could easily be plundered.

“Since my landslide victory obviously was stolen,
if you’d just ignore the facts I’d truly be beholden.”

Fearlessly, he’d lead them on a rightful march for justice.
So they marched, with no time left to logically discuss this.

With seeds of hate deeply rooted, his angry throng dispatched,
the petty tyrant snickered at the clever scheme he’d hatched.

Safe behind the White House walls the biggest loser hunkered,
watching news feeds gleefully from deep within his bunker.

Down the avenue they marched, right up to the Capitol,
where they scaled its stately walls, defiled its sacred halls.

Their misplaced trust in Donald Trump the reason for their sins,
undermining traditional democratic doctrines.

Thus the sixth day of the year denotes a failed sedition,
and citizens celebrate a president’s perdition.

Image source: Global Times (edited here)

Shared with Open Link Night #281

Stories I Did Not Create ~ with audio

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 28 Comments

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #166 offers two short pieces as inspiration, to be coupled with an image, our own or found online. Of the offered short pieces I chose the following:

inkblots mutate
to form pictures,
alphabets,
stories
I did not create

The image is one I’ve used here in the past. It shows me on my fifth birthday, in 1958. Our family tradition has been to place an extra candle on the cake, for good luck in the next year, as mentioned in this Wiki entry. (Something tells me that blowing out candles on a cake will become a thing of the past.)

Stories I Did Not Create

Decades to come, too many to count,
when I look to the past,
see stories I did not create,
stories that unfolded before, around me

Will I follow the inkblots that mutate
to form pictures and create alphabets
to understand the elements that came
to define my perspective?

What does a child know of these things?
There is only now. Before and after,
anticipation and regret, these we create.
Will I understand this, then?

For the Many ~ Golden Shovel ~ with audio

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 39 Comments

MTB: endings / beginnings, the prompt from Peter Frankis at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, asks us to write a poem while considering endings, with a suggestion to write a Golden Shovel poem.  Per Introduction: The Golden Shovel, by Don Share at Poetry Foundation, “The last words of each line in a Golden Shovel poem are, in order, words from a line or lines taken often, but not invariably, from a Brooks poem.”  This was first done by Terrance Hayes in homage to Gwendolyn Brooks, with his poem The Golden Shovel.  This, my first Golden Shovel, was inspired by Infirm, by Gwendolyn Brooks, found here.


 

For the Many

One class, one caste to include everybody.
None are immune here.
This disease that plagues us today is
intent on adding to the infirm.

One class, one caste to include everybody.
None are immune here.
Your failure to recognize this is
sure to take a toll on the infirm.

You say you have survived, but oh,
some are not so quick to mend.
You may scoff at what I say, ridicule me,
but some will never mend.
It could have been you. It may be me.
This does not make you better, a lord.

I read the signs, the news today,
and understand I am one of many, that I
am exposed when you say
you have no need to fear, to
take caution, that you are not one of them.

Despite what you say,
you, too, are of the many. Others act to
protect their fellows, protect them
with no thought to say
they cannot be troubled, to
act as though they care not for them.

For they do, with no thought to lord
it over the many.  Their desire to look
out for their fellow man, you and I,
is a sign that you are, that I am,
valued, and that is beautiful.

When the common and the beautiful
are seen as equal and viewed with
compassion, that is when my
true respect for others takes wing.

Our strength rises when that
understanding of equality is
wedded with a desire to spare the wounded.

There should be no “my,”
only “our.” When we see eye to eye,
when we come to realize that
the key to our survival is
best served when the many are bonded,
we will prevail. That, or

suffer the loss of my
sister or your mother, a deaf ear
turned to the grief that will not
serve sentiments funded
towards the consideration of others, or
even ourselves. Your regard for my
well-being should come unbidden. We walk
the same path. A beginning. An end. All
else may differ, but all else is a-wobble.

All is insanity, to think that I’m
insignificant to you, little enough
to trouble your mind, to
mask your pretension of superiority. Be
more than that. Be beautiful.

Let the world see that in you.
Join those who believe that others are
no less than beautiful.
Be one who thinks of others, too.

As a side note, this may be the longest poem I’ve written.

Darkness Dispersed

/ Ken / rivrvlogr / 28 Comments

Poetics – Exploring Gothic as a Literary Genre (Step into the realm with me),
the prompt from Sanaa at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, asks us to write a Gothic poem. I’m not sure I have the capacity for detail that requires. Brief as it is, here’s mine.

Darkness Dispersed

Past, present and future
confined to darkness,
I built a wall,
block upon block
reaching for the heavens.

Yet it refused to rise,
you removing blocks
faster than placed,
so that stars shone
as we embraced.

Image source: pxhere.com