sunken ground, watery
blue, it whirls
with summer sun
dug into the
dirt and rocks
pushed aside for
me to be
here surrounded by
ants and trees
bees and breeze
on my perch
like a dragonfly
watching the earth
Category: Poetry
Avoidance
no, not the
details, foreheads trickling
blood of children
and i’ve seen
this before in
israel and gaza
the photos and
headlines, hopeless
but then i
turn off my
phone and it
all just disappears
and i think
about the basketball
playoff game instead
Sonny Rollins Is Alive
when enough times passes
we begin to think they
are all dead
those jazz musicians
who cradled gold
instruments, lung life air
pulsating into
penetrating through everything
with their reverberating
notes of truth
it all ends
but his saxophone sound
is still here
and perhaps
will be
forever
Conform
just do what i do
five words in a line
just do what i do
be like all the rest
it is just so easy
to lose that inner voice
four words in a line
do not do that
Baseball Cards
i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages
i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense
now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever
Magnus Carlsen
thinking always about chess
like words gliding through
space and time, these
pieces of royal motion
an endless game of poetry
No More Snow Days
those frozen crystals
one after the next
swirl and gust, dance
in sky, as we stare
hoping streets turn white
with each inch on ground
silent time arrives
waiting by the radio
listening to county
after county close schools
for children only think
of sledding and cocoa, and
knocking powder off oak branches
landscape like the untouched moon
today with Zoom the flakes
still descend, but screens trap
the young inside their computers
a flat warm world without end
no more snow days
Artificial Intelligence
evolution, acorn becomes
the tree, caterpillar a
butterfly, soar into future
skies, on screens with
robotic machines choosing
videos that emerge to
distract us away from
here, the present day
always leaving the
past behind, and perhaps
this should be
until we finally
become like drawings
in the cave
look how those
humans used to be
so simple and so free
now we are all
just technology
When Instagram Spoke
no one wants the poems
give me the photos
no time to look at letters
on a page, and i don’t
really care anyway
about your abstract ideas
related to sound and sunlight
so forget it and paste
your iphone image
on the screen
get to it old man
the future is now
Mom Plays Evening Piano
she only played
mozart, on chickering
flat tusks, ebony
keys, her fingers
pressing sound into
air, while my
head on pillow
rested for sonata
slumber, this childhood
memory of time
gone by, as
if anything really
leaves this universe
empty spaces left
to be filled
again and again
Daniel W. Polk 