Orion lies on
the eastern horizon. It
means winter is here.

Windy walk at dusk,
Rustling is cause for concern.
Yet Christmas lights shine.

On My Own (excerpt)

...

The teachers were soft-spoken women
smelling like washed babies and the students
fierce as lost dogs, but they all hushed
in wonder when I named the 400 angels
of death, the planets sighted and unsighted,
the moment at which creation would turn
to burned feathers and blow every which way
in the winds of shock. I sat down
and the room grew quiet and warm. My eyes
asked me to close them. I did, and so
I discovered the beauty of sleep and that
to get ahead I need only say I was there,
and everything would open as the darkness
in my silent head opened onto seascapes
at the other end of the world, waves
breaking into mountains of froth, the sand
running back to become salt savor
of the infinite. Mrs. Tarbox woke me
for lunch—a tiny container of milk
and chocolate cookies in the shape of Michigan.

Of course I went home at 3:30, with
the bells ringing behind me and four stars
in my notebook and drinking companions
on each arm. If you had been there
in your yellow harness and bright hat
directing traffic you would never
have noticed me—my clothes shabby
and my eyes bright—; to you I'd have been
just an ordinary kid. Sure, now you
know, it's obvious, what with the light
of the Lord streaming through the nine
windows of my soul and the music of rain
following in my wake and the ordinary air
on fire every blessed day I waken the world.

PHILIP LEVINE

December 1st
by Billy Collins

Today is my mother's birthday,
but she's not here to celebrate
by opening a flowery card
or looking calmly out a window.

If my mother were alive,
she'd be 114 years old,
and I am guessing neither of us
would be enjoying her birthday very much.

Mother, I would love to see you again
to take you shopping or to sit
in your sunny apartment with a pot of tea,
but it wouldn't be the same at 114.

And I'm no prize either,
almost 20 years older than the last time
you saw me sitting by your deathbed.
Some days, I look worse than yesterday's oatmeal.

Happy Birthday, anyway. Happy Birthday to you.
Here I am in a wallpapered room
raising a glass of birthday whiskey
and picturing your face, the brooch on your collar.

It must have been frigid that morning
in the hour just before dawn
on your first December 1st
at the family farm a hundred miles north of Toronto.

I imagine they had you wrapped up tight,
and there was your tiny pink face
sticking out of the bunting,
and all those McIsaacs getting used to saying your name.

 cptbuz wrote:

This is indeed a good spot. I remember your post from a few months ago also. Keep feeling. Keep writing. There may not be a lot of discussion or critique but for sure it's being read. I've always found Radio Paradise to be incredibly receptive to original creativity.
Many of us; myself included, have often complicated thoughts and emotions and find them hard to articulate. Poetry isn't like an HOV lane for high volume traffic. Often it's more like a dirt road, as yet unpaved and without conditional access...

I've written a poem a week for a long time as part of a poetry club, never found a good place to post them... thought this might be a good spot to plant a few originals from the past 6 months.
Enjoy, discuss, be kind.




for america


pretend you don't care
send a thought, or fake a prayer
A-K shells still lying there
bodies lay in disrepair.

no amount of gun control
will fix a land without a soul
no law upon a dated scroll
will be enough to pay this toll.

no check inside a voting booth
no eye for an eye nor tooth for a tooth
can ease the pain or start to soothe
the quest for an answer, a fragment of truth.

mental health don't mean a thing
or video games or bad parenting
or CNN cutaways to children crying
for this is our price to let freedom ring.


                                                    Will LeTendre




Terms and conditions


Growing old is getting old
live to die is what we're sold
is there life and what is death
when we breathe our final breath


A final drive in our old car
we won't have to go too far
bring the wine lets have some fun
make out until the daylights done


Call the kids, say our goodbyes
one last look into your eyes
the car hum echoes in my ear
our final act of our final year


A haze it grows so thick inside
you lean on me I almost cried
been so much for me to bare
to understand how much you care


Going now its closing time
clouded head, slurred rhyme
Even after all this fuss
I see Charon has come for us

                             
                              Will LeTendre




Silhouette my silhouette


The obscurity of my shadow
is that it's always there
even in dim starlight
it's hanging on somewhere.


Was near a total eclipse
I saw my outline gazing
at my rippled white blanket
where shadow snakes were grazing.


It's been here since the start
but I can't help but wonder
will my shadow still stay with me
when I'm buried six feet under?


                                  Will LeTendre

More of Everything
by Joyce Sutphen

The people who made me possible
came from places in middle Europe,
riding steamships through the middle of
the nineteenth century. They didn't
always get their right names, and if
they wrote home, I never heard.

The people who made me possible
worked hard clearing the land, tree
by stump by prairie grass, hauling
rock off the fields and gravel to the
roads. They seldom stopped to consider
if here was better than over there––

wherever that was. If they regretted
anything, they didn't say, and they
didn't tell stories about the old country;
my people didn't make a fuss
about being born or dying early––
they always died early––which

explains why they loved weddings
and christenings, birthdays and
the Fourth of July––any time they could
sit at a picnic table listening to
a polka band, going back many
times for more of everything.

The Road
by Dana Gioia

He sometimes felt that he had missed his life
By being far too busy looking for it.
Searching the distance, he often turned to find
That he had passed some milestone unaware,
And someone else was walking next to him,
First friends, then lovers, now children and a wife.
They were good company–generous, kind,
But equally bewildered to be there.

He noticed then that no one chose the way—
All seemed to drift by some collective will.
The path grew easier with each passing day,
Since it was worn and mostly sloped downhill.
The road ahead seemed hazy in the gloom.
Where was it he had meant to go, and with whom?

 Antigone wrote:
 
I will next time! I see them occasionally at a local establishment.

oh I edited for spelling below lol 

 oldviolin wrote:
 
I love love love his fiction. I Am One of You Forever is one of my favorite novels. Please tell him so, for me.

 Antigone wrote:

 You're welcome 

I'm only acquainted with him but I shared a visit with him and his sweet wife recently over a beverage. He fascinates me.
The Shadow Box collection is so amazing...

They're poems within poems...

 oldviolin wrote:
 

Chappell is a favorite of mine. Thanks for this.

 whatshisname wrote:
 

Very nice!

Passage

The solemn pond displays the summer night
Perfect in the rondure of its speculum,
The sky set out in order, light by light.
Serenely a muskrat noses through the lines
Of stars; the cool reflective moon sways in
The water that trembling languidly but once
Now settles, steadies itself again, and shines
Impassive within the astonished O, again
Moveless, upon the water’s plane immense.
Something has happened in the world this night
Of rare consequence for some time to come,
Whether or not it alters the final sum.

Fred Chappell

 smoke rises from trees now gone
I think of these friends that came from seed
their shade, their colors, their leaves now brown
we tidy up their broken bones
the rains are here, the rains are here
desert winds blow no more along with fearsome flame
relief once more  , the rains are here
 we labor deep with sweating brow, must tidy, tidy, tidy cause
the rains are here
as we end our day in reverent peace
the curling smoke haunts the valley view
our blackened hands, our face with ash
relief the task is done once more
and as rains dance on our roof of iron
we celebrate
the rains are here, the rains are here.