held firm
every moment, consumed
not by memories
by each moment with you
always on my mind
always embraced
This poem, my first palinode, is in response to MTB: Palinode, the prompt from Grace at dVerse ~ Poets Pub. A palinode or palinody is an ode or song that recants or retracts a view or sentiment to which the poet wrote in a previous poem.
In this case, the original poem is the first poem I posted on WordPress, Grasping, as my first poem for National Poetry Writing Month, on 01 April 2014.
Distance Holds No Separation
I cross this wide river
every time I come to you.
And again, when I leave.
There is no other way,
~for distance holds no separation~
when I follow this course,
past and present become one.
I find consolation in that,
every time I cross this bridge.
My first Puente, this poem is my response to Poetics: Build a Bridge, the prompt from Merril at dVerse ~ Poets Pub. The first and third stanzas of a puente convey a different element or feeling, but they have an equal number of lines, with that number being the writer’s choice. The one-line middle stanza, set off with a tilde (~) at each end, is the puente (Spanish for bridge). It functions as the ending for the last line of the first stanza AND as the beginning for the first line of the third stanza. Rhyme is optional.
Since moving to Missouri, I’ve made the trip back to New York to visit family many times. Being retired, I pretty much have an open calendar. My wife does not, so many times I’ve driven the round-trip solo. Each time, I cross the Mississippi River. The Stan Span (Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge), named after St. Louis Cardinal baseball great Stan Musial, is on Interstate 70, one of the routes out of St. Louis.
~ Day 27 ~
In Poem Sound and Song
Listening to our shadow on a night picnic,
being visited by words, I dress myself
with raining moonbeams that bring me magic
with dream sense. Giving them our real names,
I sing to the stars of my love for you
with controlled abandon. What’s my image?
Poems and the body, think of them as being here
as one, for poems are alive. These are
the nights you love me most,
full moon me, most mad and moonly.
This poem is my response to Day 18 at napowrimo.net, where the challenge is write a poem based on the title of one of the chapters from Susan G. Woolridge’s Poem crazy: Freeing Your Life with Words, from the book’s Table of Contents, found here. I’ve included fifteen of those phrases in my poem so it is nearly a cento.
The chapter titles I have used are:
• poem sound and song
• listening to our shadow
• on a night picnic
• being visited by words
• I dress myself with rain
• bring me magic
• dream sense
• our real names
• controlled abandon
• what’s my image
• poems and the body
• being here
• poems are alive
• full moon me
• most mad and moonly
Dancers silhouette found at clipartbest.com
Ken G.
~ Day 18 ~
Dusk to Dawn
First light arrives with last, and I feel your pull
as you near my horizon framed in dusk.
Your bare presence brings the first sliver
of satisfaction, delivered in a warm light
that intensifies with each rising moment.
I feel your full embrace in a moment
of silver light that lasts through the night.
But a night of moments is never enough,
and your last light fades as first light arrives.
This poem is my response to Day 17 at napowrimo.net,
where the challenge is to write a poem about, or involving, the moon.
Ken G.
~ Day 17 ~
Wholehearted
Emptiness for nearly sixty years.
Never knowing why. Doctors thought
they had the answer last year,
when they found a hole in my heart.
But that emptiness was filled ten years ago,
when you came into my life.
This poem is my response to MTB: The Body and Poetry, the prompt from Grace at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to write a poem using a part of the body as a metaphor.
Early last year, I was diagnosed with a Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO), or whole in my heart – the possible cause for a TIA I experienced in late 2019 (with no more occurrences). It’s a congenital condition, and the doctors have decided to monitor the situation, rather than performing surgery at my age. On the plus side for my heart, I met my wife ten years ago.
~ Day 8 ~
The Sweetest Wine
Together, our horizon knows no bounds.
The nearest rose and the most distant star
could not be closer to this truth.
Yet the scent of a rose,
the beauty in a star, cannot compare.
One kiss from you, and I know the sweetest wine.
This poem (off-prompt for Day 5 of napowrimo.net) is my response to Quadrille #125 – In Praise of the Grape, the prompt from Linda Lee Lyberg at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to use a form of the word wine in a 44-word poem, with no required meter or rhyme.
~ Day 5 ~
Images
Wikimedia Commons – Rosette Nebula surrounding star cluster NGC2244
Astronomy Picture of the Day – “cluster galaxies and cluster dark matter, analogous to the many points of light one would see while looking through a wine glass at a street light”
900 Miles
90, 271, 71, 70
There is logic in that progression.
There to here, a direct route.
But it was not logic that drove me.
It was love that brought me down those roads.
Logic would have asked, “Why?”
Leave behind all I’d come to know in my life?
But what would life be without you?
And so, I chose this road rather than a life of regret.
I chose you, and that made all the difference.
This poem is my response to Day Two at napowrimo.net, where the prompt, inspired by the Robert Frost poem “The Road Not Taken,” is to “write a poem about your own road not taken – about a choice of yours that has ‘made all the difference’ and what might have happened had you made a different choice.” In 2012, I followed my heart and moved from New York to Missouri.
~ Day 2 ~
Broken Cycle, Whole Heart
Wrinkled, tossed, unused,
this heart had grown
a stranger to affection
until your heart took it
for a spin, rinsed away
any trace of despair,
and broke the cycle
that held it captive
with a love that is
permanent, pressed
into the pages of both
my heart and mind.
This poem is my response to Poetics: Put Your Words on Spin Cycle, the prompt from De Jackson at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, which is to write a laundry poem. She offered the option to use a list of laundry words and to include three or more words or phrases from the list.
fluff & fold
spin cycle
permanent press
wash & wear
cycle
dryer fuzz
machine wash warm
tumble dry
dry flat
presoak
wrinkled
front load
rinse
fine delicates
clothes pins
downy
tide
Image source: Pinterest
one by the other
horizon to horizon
a shared light, free of shadow
ere the fall of night
and early in the morning
sun and moon in an embrace
As a birthday gift to myself (and my lovely wife, of course) this sedoka
was created by revising The Night Is Ours, my poem from yesterday.
I’m sharing this with Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday
#Poetry Challenge No. 215, #Poet’sChoice.
A Sedoka is an unrhymed poem composed of two katauta. A katauta is able to stand alone, with three lines and a syllable pattern of 5-7-7. A Sedoka therefore has the syllable count: 5-7-7, 5-7-7. Each katauta must be able to be read independently, but also create a cohesive singular work in the Sedoka.
The Night Is Ours
and the morning
waking beside each other
sun and moon in an embrace
from horizon to horizon
proximity a measure of
darkness and light
the mere sight of one by the other
a shared light, free of shadow
I found this poem in my “Unfinished” folder, in four drafts dating from June 2020 through August 2020. I’m sure it was inspired by something I read on WordPress, but I just can’t place it. I think it makes a good counterpoint to yesterday’s poem.
Shared with Open Link Night #285: On This Day…
at dVerse ~ Poets Pub, hosted by Linda.
Image source: tattooparadise.org (edited here)
