you once told me to- find my true north, thank you of course, & realistically we will never meet again, after all, it has already been over a decade, but chance encounters are most of life, then just memory, then nothing, or nothing that we know for sure, but i still appreciate you, sometimes read you, even watched a video once of you reading, describing jellyfish everywhere, unseen danger swimming all around, true, the sea, ocean, life, can be fear, but rarely here, on this page, screen, canvas, thanks again for your courage, i try to be like you.
Tag: Inspiration
Gazing at Longevity Peaches
this is that poem, the one where the writer visits a museum, stares for a long time, tries to transcribe, translate, imbibe one artform into another, so here i am, san francisco, qi baishi, his peaches, better than super mario bros., ty cobb, safeway’s produce section, sickly sweet del monte in a can, better than ice cream, shout out sarah mclachlan, maybe not better than ice cream, but i’ve never seen frozen dessert so delectably hung on a wall, and to think he lived (1864) & died (1957) fully immersed in art, the way i want to swim in letters, inspiring, the colors, the colors, spheres, juice-filled suns on earth, made by human hands, human hands.
2020 Yearbook Dedication
This is a throwback to 4 years ago. Students at The Hamlin School dedicated the yearbook to me that year. We finished 2020 online, and I never saw the Yearbook Dedication until just this week. Those students are now about to graduate high school! Time never stops moving…
She Drives Real Fast
don’t call her old
or elderly, foot on the
accelerator, doing 73 mph
on a south carolina highway
near myrtle beach, my
91-year old grandmother
in her pontiac, like the
jan and dean song about
the lady from pasadena
she died a year later
left me the car
determined to follow her
lead and never stop
moving forward
Poetic Inspiration
reading you makes me want to write, then write some more
that you were able to say it just so pushes me to plow ahead
to speak the nonsense things while sitting in my bed
you help me drift and sift through words lingering in the air
with hopes they might land lightly on the page
for what you wrote has become my nightly stage
After Reading Stanley Kunitz
what are memories?
a skipping stone
under layers of
silt, bottom of
this primordial riverbed
water rushing over
unaware that time
has passed, soon
all is forgotten
So I Keep On Writing
Mary Oliver writes of
flowers and she does it
very well, as I just stare
at words, wishing that
goldenrod could mean
as much to me, stuck in
this urban world, nature
on the fringe, everything
I cannot see, because in
the car I move too fast
to even smell the air,
but excuses will never
win, nor are they really
true, so I keep on writing,
this much I know to do
Pleading For The Muse
i give up
nothing to say
words won’t play
for me tonight
want the muse
to sing that
siren song, crash
me into rocks
but no, her
throat is raspy
and i’m just
a mere mortal
not a god
or someone worthy
of such love
but that voice
please, just that
strong slight voice
where are you?
Wait for the Rain
BIG thanks to WestWard Quarterly for publishing Wait for the Rain.
Thomas Edison Prays
I read somewhere
Thomas Edison had
a thinking bench
upstairs alone in
that room he
just sat and
thought and thought
and sat, sometimes
he would find
ideas and sometimes
they found him
because he was
waiting and not
really doing much
of anything, kind
of praying to
silence that something
would arrive and
if he sat
long enough and
was very quiet
something always did
Daniel W. Polk 