Original Poetry
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Tenant Glance
Tenant Glance When I first came to this place (or did It come to me?), it was chewed, open, Denuded, with no whisper of slow stride On its hide. But now it has curled In on me, reclaiming the little areas I’ve marked, implacable in its green and curved Gaze, knowing it can outlast me. ~ S.K. Orr
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Backhoe
Backhoe Man and dog walked on around The yellow monster parked nearby Waiting to open up the ground Which would receive the local who’d died. ~ by S.K. Orr
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On The Shoulder
On The Shoulder Time has tricked us And we will not be victors Our boasts have stalled along the side And our engines are ticking as they cool. We don’t want to read the gauges And our tools are rusted and jumbled We sit in our seats still, though Our eyes never leaving the rear view mirror. We are sorry. We are reading the map Of resignation. We cannot find our route But we remember where we started from. Tow us to the garage, mister. Take us home. ~ S.K. Orr
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Hidden, Buried, Forgotten
Hidden, Buried, Forgotten There’s no mistake, we have our stretching conversation. He’s been alive before my name was bound but he’s fully new to me, calling to me when I daydreamed past him on a sultry afternoon. This time I stopped and leaned against him to loosen my boot and spill a pebble into the grass, and I thought I felt him shift beneath the puny press of my hand. I noticed how a board was fastened to him with large nails, making him a part of the cattle fence beside his trunk. The green-stain of moss was daubed along the bark, a raw patina of time and what he’d…
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The Star Mote — a Poem
The Star Mote I parked beneath a favorite tree, stepped up onto the yielding mulch and reached for a leaf to touch, my morning ritual before submitting to the electronic cage. When I stroked the lowest leaf, I saw within its curl a crimson speck of a spider mite, on a web no larger than a nickel. Cupped in the sun’s red ray, he seemed a mote from that distant star itself. I spoke to him, and why is it foolish to suppose he didn’t fathom my intent? I left him to the day and his destruction of the leaf. ~ by S.K. Orr
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Lunacy
Accompanying my dog this morning, I stopped and stared at the moon as if rooted like one of the trees through which she stared down. Does she really control the tides? I do not think so. Does she affect a woman’s cycle? Perhaps. Does she whisper to the crazed ones in their scrawled rooms, confirming their fears and prodding them on in their muttered plots? I suspect she does. Is her light really cooler than the air through which she travels to us, floating on birdbaths and in the hollow stumps of long-dead oaks? Science might tell us. One thing for me is not a question: she has a voice,…
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In Volumes
In Volumes I come to my books defenseless, willing to be altered by them, even if I am hesitant to be altared. Docile as acolyte to master, I approach them. No longer seeking the fast technique, I accept my new permanent status as a plodder, taking more time to manage even a slight incline. Many’s the time I have tacked my sails in the wake of a novel, or gorged on rich fare laid on the table of a short story. So now if a bit more discerning, not in quality but in content which has the potential to jam a stick in my spokes, I want my last phase…
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Against The Harvest
Against The Harvest It’s what I never feared that has come to devil Me the most. Sent back and now standing Here, round this road-crook,waiting for his Distant get to finally make it past me On just the right night. How many of the Old ones told me he never meant me any Blood, never cast forward to the ashes Of decision, the thing that followed him After he glanced down into that shower- Filled stump on that half-moon night, And what She had thrown to him came forth. Standing now, standing ever, I am Rooted to this patch and cannot roam, Companion to the possums who try to climb…
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Accomplished By Needles
Up before dawn with two hungry dogs, one of them also quite urinacious (the spotted menace has no such weakness, being of the Ancient Order of the Iron Bladder), and Mrs. Orr prepared breakfast tacos. We ate and talked of west Texas and her tough people and her immutable wind that scrapes across her lion-colored hide. Jinx and I walked and watched cows bent to their unceasing cropping of grass, working their magic of transforming green blades into white milk. In the un-sunned early hours, we could hear the moist tugging of the grass into the soft lips, and an unseen owl in the enormous oak tree asked his eternal…
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Morning Walk With Haiku
Arrow of a dog Speckled like a roadrunner Waiting for Acme. *** The dew on the road Keeps the dust from rising up Our passage is clean. *** Lopped-off limbs on pine Sockets stare at me like eyes Did they build or burn? *** Eleven birds perch Carolina wrens hail me We share a Sunday. *** Bird bath is unused Needles float on calm surface Clouds get reflected. *** Incongruity Red bird on satellite dish Things seen and unseen. ~ S.K. Orr