Holy cow! I was on a tear revising poems this week until I got struck down by the flu or some other dread disease. It's funny. I've not been sick all winter. Then, spring comes along, and I get slammed. Well, I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. I only wanted you to know that I've been working hard on revising poems until Friday. Since Friday, I've been sleeping when I can.
There are several poems below. Please give each its due diligence, and, as always, ENJOY!
Hymn #1: Ode to Joy
(Nothing to do with Beethoven)
The sun winks through the leaves.
The dew sparks on the grass.
Troubles amble through my mind.
I think I’ll let them pass.
Yes, I will let them pass.
They cannot stay today.
Because this day is mine alone,
I’ll shoo them on their way.
The fog rests on the pond.
The tall sunflowers sway.
I know that winter’s coming soon,
But it won’t be today.
No, it won’t be today
Because this day is mine.
When fuzzy caterpillars crawl,
I’ll seek some other sign.
Jays warble in the oaks.
Grapes ripen on the vine.
Tomorrow looms for other folks.
Today, this day is mine.
Oh, yes, this day is mine.
I will not let it pass.
Let worries come some other day.
My joy is here at last.
Funeral for a Friend
Part I.
Here on the strong and nestled hill
Where timeless winds blow
But now are still,
I, within a shattered whole,
Am quaking in my soul
And acting without any will.
Part II.
No hush flows through the knitting pines,
No mirth fills the walnut's brevity,
No crackle ticks the oak tree’s tines,
No prickly gumball's break and fall,
No willow tendril waves and whines,
But silence spreads across them all.
Part III.
Leaden feet carry me to the door
Where I once hailed my friend
And never once was I before
So averse to cross that door
Or to meet the folks who sat within.
Part IV.
I must think now, for memory is strong,
And it seems I am part of someone’s bad dream.
A woman sits there who does not belong,
Her lips aquiver with a repressed scream.
The couch, where we, for many years,
Watched Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live,
Is covered black like convoluted biers.
Legs move in dozy numbness like a beehive
Dosed with drowsy smoke by its master.
I see my reflection in the painting of praying hands.
I see my shadow crawling on cracked plaster.
The clock, no longer counting time's tumbling sands,
Has submitted to the wish of Joshua's hands.
I am a piece in this, yet not one of the parts.
Men joke about the prospects of a savior
Women suffer the hardness of their hearts,
Yet all know they must show proper behavior.
Without a doubt, everyone acts with good sense
While whirling in my mind with gods and demons.
I'm glad I relive these things in past tense.
I know no right or wrong within their reasons.
Their voices chop in fan blades that cool flushes
Of errant notions and bodies to hold.
Tickled hands draw from embarrassed brushes
For in embrace the thoughts were not so bold.
Part V.
His mother grabbed my hand and cried
And pulled me strongly to her breast.
For something we had shared had died,
But even now I must confess
That I had never called her mother,
Not one time in my life,
But it was well to call her Other
Since she is now Our Father's wife.
Part VI.
She collapsed within my arms
With a dread I’d never felt.
Her cheeks warmed the collar of my shirt.
I could feel her heartbeat as we knelt
And prayed for Death to ease away this hurt.
The limestone of the fireplace blushed red,
A log lay in the dog-irons cold and black,
Her hands, clenched on my bare neck, bled,
The blood ran freely down my back.
She asked me for some peace with pleading eyes
And I, with best intent, choked up and lied,
"When one of us passes, only a part of us dies,"
But she did not believe me. A year later, she died.
Part VII.
I swear that those who die, in us, live on
And run and fight and love and procreate.
We throw angry threats at burdensome fate
Until, at last, we are done.
We are time, and we are timeless, and we wait.
We are all a part, and we are all one.
Part VIII.
The floor was bowed with weight and dust.
Empty hands gave emptier food,
And hollow minds took bites.
Shallow souls gave sound advice
That seemed so right and just,
But held no grace in hardened hearts
As diamonds do with lights.
There was no more game, no more play,
The dirt was on the grave.
The flowers were sent,
The passions were spent.
Time to collect the crockery and wave.
The proper behavior didn't even make a dent.
Part IX.
Now, I alone with just the two
Had no notion what I should do
Standing paralyzed with fear
As if I felt a god was near,
But I have heard no holy tongue
Nor songs with angel’s voices sung.
I could not speak or make a sound
To bring the walls of heaven 'round.
For here was deep and dark despair
Which I could by no means repair.
I felt so near the gates of Hell,
That dumb was right and just as well.
Thus, with our reflection done,
We stood together all as one
With silent stares and sodden hearts
Bearing the loss of many parts.
Part X.
Here the bad dream ends, and new life begins
In long walks through scattered leaves and rocks.
Here we dwell in our passions and sins,
In our own prisons of memories' locks.
I am the same, though tempered by time,
But several of the rest are gone.
I evoke them through communal rhyme
While all the others went their ways alone.
I remain to give each day its glory,
To praise each setting of the sun,
To hear birds sing, and to tell the story
Of how the parts are live in one.
Part XI.
It was a sunny day, though no one knows,
When he decided life must end
And he believed, as the saying goes,
That he had no future and no friend.
The evening light shined through the trees,
The birds and squirrels paused at his feet,
He said no prayer on bended knees
But listened to his own heart's beat.
He smoked a joint and then gave praise
To marijuana's gift of easing pain,
Then he put the pistol to his face
And aimed the barrel at his brain.
The cracking of the pistol made deer start,
But they went back to caring for their young.
The faithful dog who loved him would not part
And licked away the dried blood with its tongue.
And there he lay all quiet in the wood
More peaceful than the act that he had done.
He sliced away the part he thought not good
And left no pieces here to soothe the one.
Part XII.
Some say he was a father,
Some say he was a child,
From what I know and gather,
His mind was just too wild.
We cannot take nature and make a man,
No animal surprises us with reason,
No human laws supplant the natural bans,
So we live in the throes of every season.
His time was not in summer nor in spring,
He didn’t bow before the Harvest moon.
He grew weary of this cyclic thing
And brought his Winter on too soon.
We often play gods with Nature's parts
And regret the great harm that we've done,
But we seldom realize in our prideful hearts
That we cannot replace parts with the One.
Part XIII.
For his memory, I will now let him sing a song that he wrote in June of 1986 and stuffed into my notebook of songs and poems.
The stage is now yours Glenn Aron Hicklin 1966-1989. See you on the following page.
Silence, Light, and Sound
When it all comes down from all around,
There is never enough silence, light, or sound.
It's always there never gone,
Always there never found
Sometimes I wonder where we are bound.
Coming fast and furious,
Dying slowly, steadily, surely, now.
Has it been here before or never again?
Experience it now, it's not a sin.
Noone knows where it has been.
Survived somehow it did, so right it is;
No doubt
Never enough silence, light, or sound.
Flowing over, under, around, beside,
It's will strikes constant, steady, strong,
In and between the right and wrong.
One way in no way out
Without a doubt.
No one here; we're all there then
With one way in not wanting out.
Begin anew four seasons to a year
Or one thought in time
All the time, never a rhyme,
To fall behind and hide.
So to what it is silence, light, or sound,
Sometimes I wonder where we are bound.
A Certain Slant of Light
There is a certain slant of light--
The lady poet said--
And I’m sure that she is right--Because
It angles through my head--
And rattles through the oak trees’ leaves--
And spears the sodden ground--
Then topples sheaves of golden sedge--
And flees without a sound--
It squeezes through some hollow reeds--
Yet it rasps no whistles--
But files the tips of black thorns on--
Hoary-headed thistles--
It latches on the sweet gums’ balls--
And flickers on their tines--
Then burns the backs of grazing cows--
And glistens on their spines--
There is a certain slant of light--
I should not watch pass by--
But when I do I hold my breath--
And hope that I don’t die—
7. I do not call this an imitation of Emily Dickinson. She is a New England poet, and I am a southern poet. This is more like a tribute. After writing much of the poem, I decided to use a slight changing of her line, “There’s a certain slant of light.” The rest of the poem was finished by the time I sought her direction.
Moonlight Harmony
The night world’s full of “mights” and “seems”
And tangled webs of motes and beams.
Where chaos flows, the moon folk need
To slow its rude and frenzied speed
Before they let confusion pass
Into the moon’s aerial mass.
The moon sits on its hazy shelf
And pulls all madness in itself
And gathers bedlam with its charms
To squeeze within its thin, white arms,
And when the blood ceases to boil,
It soothes the burn with pixie oil.
Then, it strokes with loving care
The weary wings and tussled hair
Of moon folk who won’t make a peep
Because they are so fast asleep
Inside the moon’s eternal loving,
Their mind’s benumbed, but eyeballs moving.
Is it the moon or their minds’ wiles
That twist their sleeping lips to smiles?
And is it true or does it seem,
They only live inside a dream
That slips away like memory
As soft as moonlight harmony?
Water and Ice
(Simply Imitating Frost)
Some say the world will end with water.
I’ve heard that it may turn to air.
I’m not so sure about the matter,
But I am sure that I don’t care.
Just ask me why.
Why? I won’t be there.
The Rambler’s Song
A strong desire pulls me to go,
No idle hours, no time for sleep.
The rivers flood with melting snow
And swamp the lowlands six foot deep.
The mountain pass is cleared of mist.
The sun glows in an azure sky
In hues of red-capped amethyst
That imprint on the rambling eye.
I must be gone, for precious time
Is wasted while in your embrace
And vital ties to the sublime
Are swallowed up by hungry space.
Where breezes blow, I will follow,
Drinking in each sense and sight,
From tallest peak, down each hollow,
Through echoed Day and constant Night.
Please do not ask, I cannot say.
In time, I will be back this way.
Know this, dear ones, that my love grows
In measure with the miles it goes.
Foggy Dreams
The forest wears a sheen of white,
A soft ethereal pearl,
Lit by scattered strings of light
That cause the mist to swirl.
Two eyes of heaven pierce the fog
One’s false and one is true.
The arrows slicing through the bog
Make prisms in the hue.
Last night, a storm from jagged clouds
Poured rain in gusty lashes.
Today, the sun, arrayed in shrouds,
Echoes the storm’s cold flashes.
And with a fire that is not bright
Because the fog resists,
It rolls along, a wheel of light,
Through heaven’s moving mists.
And all the world is black or white
Except where lancing beams
Cut through the haze into our sight
And wake us from our dreams.
What Is It?
It is a galaxy but made of wood,
A blank green slate hung with a hundred spheres,
A shape tinseled in whirlwind harmony
And glistening throughout with crystal tears.
The hundred orbs reflect a lampless light
And glimmer red and silver, gold and green.
They make a soundless music in the night
And wake a thousand memories unseen.
Now, people smile and stare and dream of ghosts,
Of strangers long ago in foreign lands,
Of Germans hanging eucharistic hosts
That say we are redeemed—and there it stands.
The Passing of a Year
The final maple copters whirl
And drift without a sound.
Hushes made by oak leaves twirl
Across the frosty ground.
Snowbirds scatter, bob, and weave
In deft but soundless motions.
Flocks of geese billow and heave
In waves on heaven’s oceans.
Fine strands of atmospheric mist,
‘Round unseen axles spinning,
Mirror the grass the frost has kissed
In Winter’s annual thinning.
In whorls of wind, flora, and sky,
The voiceless year rolls out.
The kindling day will soon swing by
And enter with a shout,
And with glad songs and words of hope,
We’ll greet the infant year.
The prior one will pout and mope,
But pass without a tear.
Next week, I should have a few of the crow brothers poems.
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