I stood on the ramparts
that cold, wet morning
looking out over the waiting
Irish Sea, this day offering
only rain and a November chill.
Write haiku, she said to us
and I thought of Basho
and Issu who never stood
on a 13th Century Welsh
fortress and never imagined
writing about Llywelyn
great or not nearly so.
In the rain and chill
I scribbled furiously,
retreated to the outer ward
where I was joined
by a fellow poet who
suggested that a tea
in the village would
please even old Basho.
The poet muses: I wonder
if a cat purrs when no one
is in the same room.
I suppose we could put in
a microphone and find out.
Schrodinger comments:
if there is no microphone
the cat is purring and
the cat is not purring,
and what is the half-
life of a poem.
First Published in the 2005 Scars Publications Poetry Wall Calendar
I will take it,
the aging poet said
to the ever more sparse
crowd at the weekly
open mic,
as a recognition
is the growth
in the quality
of my writing
that I continue
being rejected
but now by a
much higher
quality of
literary journals.
A poet suggested that sin
was created by the Christians,
wrong, of course, but perhaps
just being politically correct
in not naming the Jews as
its creator, or at least
giving it a name and rulebook.
And on the point of accuracy
the poet might have noted
that the Jews created
the Christians, for Jesus
was one of them, a reformer
before Judaism would allow
anything beyond orthodoxy.
All of which is a long way
of explaining why I am
now a practicing Buddhist.
If there were truly justice
at least of the poetic sort
perhaps Van Gogh could
have been born 75 years
earlier, and in Vienna
not Holland, so that when
he decided to be rid
of an ear he could have
offered it to Beethoven
neither of his working
in his later years. And
if a poet could arrange
time travel using his license
then he could just as easily
have made the ear work
for Beethoven. But
on second thought,
heaven knows what
the mighty Ninth Symphony
might have sounded like
if Beethoven had to listen
constantly to the critics.
Paper is at once both
the cruelest invention a writer
may have stumbled across
and also her salvation.
The blank page invites,
often demands the pen
and is unjudging, yet the poet
may change or delete
but the paper retains the original
and throws it back in his face.
The computer, many say,
changed all of that, backspace
or highlight and delete and
that mistake, misuse, misadventure
is gone forever, but
with a wrong keystroke
all you may have is a blank screen
and your words so well shaped,
thoughts perfectly expressed
can be lost in the ether.
Where did I put that pen?
“I will take it,”
the aging poet said
to the ever more sparse
crowd at the weekly
open mic,
“as a recognition
is the growth
in the quality
of my writing
that I continue
being rejected
but now by a
much higher
quality of
literary journals.”
Few will dare say it, but I
have always imagined myself
among the few at most things
so I suppose it falls to me.
The lifecycle of the poet
incises an arc and there are
recognizable nodes along its path
from beginning to end.
The first poem published in a
journal, no matter how small,
then one in a publication others
have heard of, if never read.
Next you are in good company in
the Review you could find
on the shelves of your bookstore
in the deep past when bookstores existed,
then onward to the self-published
book or chapbook, and maybe one
by a noted press, the apex
for almost any poetic career.
But gravity takes hold, the descent
will be sharp and often ugly, marked
by the poet believing the blurbs
on the back cover of his book.
I have had two,
although the first is long
forgotten, so perhaps it
no longer counts, it
certainly didn’t to her,
announcing its end
like the conductor
of a train running late
on the mainline to sadness.
Perhaps I have not forgotten
but all I see is myself
standing alone, intoning
words to which the crowd
intently listens, much like
the audience at a reading
by a lesser known poet,
feigned polite awareness.
I’ll just say I’ve had one
for it is easier that way
on all three parties.
He stood in front of the class
in a more than half empty lecture hall
and leaned into the podium, almost smiling.
He was here, a real poet, half famous
by his own reckoning, totally so by ours
since he was rumpled, as a poet ought,
his sport coat tweedy and ill fitting.
Still we harbored some doubts,
for there was no telltale sign
of a fountain pen’s ink
on his fingers and his nails
looked fresh from a manicure.
But he gripped the podium, read
and only glanced down occasionally,
so he must be a real poet,
for he didn’t bend the fingers
as if always hovering over
a keyboard, waiting for inspiration.
an old writer and his words 