i wander
the road inside
my mind
near fields
once brazen
with life.
daylight fades
and grey
mist hovers
in the sky,
whispers secrets
softly
to the swelling
shadows.
Tag: memory
Memories
“Memories” is one of my first attempts at a larger abstract acrylic painting on a 16 x 20 inch canvas. I’ve been painting for a few months now and have really enjoyed having an additional creative outlet aside from poetry and music.
the baseball bat
as a child i can remember him
slipping away from the house
into the shed, then reappearing
with a hand-made baseball bat,
one of the many he crafted long
ago for a forgotten ozark team.
they all shattered or cracked
from wear, and we believed
all were lost. but after he died
we found a bag inside the shed
under years of dirt and dust,
twelve baseball bats remained.
i keep one near my desk, still
smooth with the brand burned
deep in the wood like the many
memories of him upon our minds.
topography
there is a place inside of you,
a place that can never escape.
a place where you once were
but is now inescapably within
your mind. it haunts you,
but you haunt it too. you keep
going back, and it revisits you.
landscape changes as a setting
sun’s long shadows fade away.
Winter
Words form slowly in winter
when wind blows rigid
branches in the first freeze.
White flakes gently fall
while the trees write stories
in the sky. My breath
sticks to a window warm
and gray where I trace words
from memory. They fade
into fog like passing thoughts,
beginning again the lonely scene.
* A revision of a poem written 20 years ago.
the galactic sojourner
wandering through time
the gunpowder soul startles
the senses. it reminds us
the past is just a parting shot
barreling backwards through
a black hole of memories.
Autumn
Embed from Getty Images
I began my morning walk
not knowing when I’d return.
I had time, or rather,
time had me by the hand
and led me somewhere
I had not been. A field
with wild grass stretched
to every horizon except
for one tree whose leaves
were the colors of dusk.
I stayed a while past lunch,
my pockets full of things
I thought I had lost.
Along the Way
The road is worn by years
of heavy wear, and I breathe
the familiar scent of trees,
brush, and wild flowers mixed
with slow decay. But then
it was there, around a turn,
and startled my mid-day trance:
three small stones stacked
upon a stump, still wet
from their home in the creek.
You were nowhere in sight.
uncovered
the hinges of the hidden door
groaned slowly with time’s passing.
then the room, the open window’s
breath of wind faint upon my skin.
the soft yellow morning light
magnified the grey layer of dust
astonished by the memory of years.
present
the tires on the borrowed car
cannot grasp the ice beneath
we slide spin turn accelerate
then the dull thud as the lincoln
crashes against a bank of snow
caroms unharmed across the lot
we laugh scream wild with life
until another drift launches us
somewhere we cannot imagine
* From Awaiting the Images
Awaiting the Images 