Author Information
Midlife
You hardly know the moment
when autumn turns to winter,
but one day you look for the sun
and see only trees, pious and
pilgrim-gray, preaching
endlessly of abstinence.
I admired them once,
when they were terminally
beautiful, when beauty,
like the sable dreams of youth,
was never earned, just taken.
When did those green fillies
grow ribs and scales?
Now quiet is the language
they mumble to each other,
and the next move the earth makes
will be snowfall.
When did I wake up and find
I outran my desires?
When did bouquets of green
become this tangled nest
feathered by dreamless sky?
When I looked for the sun
as I remembered it:
A gilded promise.
Now the gasping soul is a legend,
humming, not wailing, toward its end,
so wise and polished,
never a victim of the approaching night,
but a proverb
rewritten again and again.
Much like forgiveness.
Much like ripened hearts.
The morning was my teacher;
The afternoon, my master;
Now the evening--call it profit,
the harvest, the prize
or tomorrow--rises.
And while gravity conspires
with flesh to anchor us
to this fatal dance,
the soul and mind
conspire to live,
to bring back spring
with the turn of a thought,
to remember proverbs
written by prayerlight
and that forever begins
where the past ends.
Patricia Joan Jones
That hits home like a
That hits home like a blizzard with no apologies. And the midlife moves on and there are moments that only poetry is left and the support thereof. Thank you for keeping this poem posted.
here is poetry that doesn't always conform
galateus, arkayye, arqios,arquious, crypticbard, excalibard, wordweaver
Thank you for getting this!
Thank you for getting this! I'm humbled and endlessly grateful for your brilliant interpretation.
And though at times the snowy
And though at times the snowy landscape of poetry may be barren that is what it is and all the creatures that do not hibernate and all the evergreens that do not bow to frost or hail become as Cinderella's coterie (snowy owls, snow leopards and such) rare but move in that milieu as if it were another Season!
here is poetry that doesn't always conform
galateus, arkayye, arqios,arquious, crypticbard, excalibard, wordweaver
Your comments are poetry
Your comments are poetry itself. Thank you for that gorgeous reflection.
Gravity
as a conspiracy - cool image, it resonates. "Sun and see only trees" - that's a lyrical way to greet the gravidics of time.
.
Lady A
Thank you so much for your
Thank you so much for your support. Always an honor.
This poem, like all your
This poem, like all your others, is so far above what most of us can produce. It is full of striking imagery and memorable phrase. But, although soaring like your others, its last two lines move into pure theology, which, as Dante has shown us, is a mighty fine place for a poem to be. Like his Divine Comedy, your poems soar from earth through the cosmos, and then into the Heavenlies, or the spiritual aspects of existence. Your individual poems are wonderful as individual poems; but I believe, like Wallace Stevens' poems, the final collection will be an epic vision greater than the sum of its parts.
Starward
I'm deeply humbled by your
I'm deeply humbled by your beautifully expressed appreciation for my work. It inspires me to keep writing, and there are no words to express my gratitude for this gift.