Poems
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Consider the Birds of the Air; Consider My Random Thoughts
The day was muggy and hazy, ushered in by rain and a good, belligerent breeze. Everything got a good watering, but by mid-afternoon, the sun pushed through the canopy of clouds and microwaved everything into a steamy glare. The breeze remained, though diminished from the morning hours, and made things tolerable. Jinx offered his opinion that the paucity of birds is due to the Coopers hawk who is still hanging around. Thinking on his approach, I realized that the non-seed eating birds like doves and robins have been as scarce as the feeder birds. About noon, I saw the hawk gliding through the back yard, about twenty feet off the…
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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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Little Things Find Their Beds
I had the day off due to yesterday’s holiday falling on a Sunday, and I made good use of it. Jinx and I moved half of a load of wood I’ve been putting off, and then I built a new door for the goat shed– another procrastination project. Mowed the front meadow and decided to go ahead and cut the entire yard, since it would be needing it by week’s end. By the time the sun was slanting down across in the west, my feet were sore and I was out of steam. So I sat and read the rest of the day, procrastinating on my correspondence, too, watching it…
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For The Maid
One of the more tedious things I encounter when reading blogs is a blogger mentioning or quoting someone, then adding the disclaimer, “Now of course, I don’t agree with everything he/she writes, but this specific thing was profitable…” This sort of thing strikes me as terribly unmanly. If one doesn’t have the courage to quote or share the work of a particular individual, one should probably just keep quiet. The whiny “Don’t judge me because I quoted someone or read a book by someone who doesn’t dot all of the eyes or cross all of the tees” is a sort of false-humility-cum-virtue-signaling, and I dislike it strongly. It’s the sort…
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Like Millstones
From my high place I stood and watched the dog turn a half-dozen cows, efficient as a barking rudder, and my father came to me and said Why are you looking down? and I said I look like you. That you do, he said and left again. The stones in the road stared back at me. Man of action, they mocked. Don’t say such things, I told them. I’ve only ever loved you. That’s true, they said, and let me pass. The wind, comfortable today, parted the high grass like hair and came back around to me, carrying the voice of my mother on it. Don’t let your thoughts stay…
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Cold Stove
Cold Stove It crouches over there, arms wrapped around the knees drawn up against its chest, dark and mute and staring with its one great eye, reminding me that time has come round again, that I am unprepared, that I have spent my hours staring instead of rending. You are late, it whispers, and it knows its words have hit their mark because it sees me frowning at it, aware, me and my less-than-guilty-but-more-than-chagrined shrug. It knows I’m already casting my thoughts forward to a rushing day when my wife will hold the ladder, when my wife will call to me to be careful while I fit together the long…
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Transfer Of Ownership
Transfer of Ownership He signed the title, handed over the keys Watched the old truck roll across the grass Then saw the nose-prints, felt his heart seize Her last memento on the passenger window’s glass. ~ S.K. Orr
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Woes Rise
Woes Rise Is it a good hour for praying? Aren’t my hands folded right? The face of your boy rubs the pad of my thumb The corpus knows just what I’m saying Here, in the golden dark, smoking Woes in tendrils rise to Cause a watching spider to cough Upon his hidden wagon-wheel In my not-so-secret chamber. ~ S.K. Orr
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For The Beauty
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging…
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Finally, Exile
Finally, Exile No living man can fault me For the strange, strange books I’ve read They joined to me so softly Not one was scrawled in red And I took them up with trembling And I put them down so cold My pious mind dissembling While I stood outside the fold. ~ S.K. Orr