Mackinac Sky

A fall morning on an island in a great lake
beneath heavy clouds, the layer we see
and more, unseen but surely felt, stacked
like pancakes on the horizon-rimmed plate
of the world.  Fresh wind dissolves the clouds
and the midday sky is a heartbreaking blue.
Then sunset, clouds building again, beasts
lumbering across a desolate plain, the colors,
a palette of Wedgewood, egg yolk, lilac and
rose petal.  One gull cries and wheels and banks,
how small we feel, a fleeting melancholy
resolving into a dark field lit by tiny stars.

The Morning After

Another storm last night —
thunder explosions and rain
bulleting the metal roof.

I followed the trail
of red-brown feathers
through the long wet grass

but didn’t find the rest
of the rooster.   Maybe a hawk
took him, more likely a fox

or a lone coyote. This world
is an over-ripe apple cleaved
into predator and prey.

The morning sky is latticed
pink and blue.   When
did I become a man

who sees every blessed sunrise?

 

Poem Accepted for Publication

Thank you to the editors of the new Rockvale Review for selecting one of my poems from more than 900 submissions. Issue #1 is scheduled for on-line publication in November.

Another senseless shooting

All I can think to do is repost a poem I wrote after another mass shooting, that one less deadly by a factor of 10 times.

Tucson

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Ray Sharp

Saguaros stand on Sonoran hills
like a million men and women.

Anyone will tell you that
as we all recognize the familiar form.

Upright beings with arms
waving friendly how-do’s

arms hanging down
reaching for guns

arms up mean don’t shoot.
Saguaros, too, fall down dead.

Saguaro sounds like sorrow.

Passwords

I type my secret code
like the nine-thousandth name
of an inconsequential god

to unlock the place
where I can tap out these words
straight from my heart

to your brain, or the other way
around. No more endless variations
on the names and dates of

my three grown progeny, now
it’s a mnemonic based on the name
of my first book, fruit of

a different kind of labor,
how you may come to know me,
no fig from a thistle.

Three Photographs (from the Vietnam War)

Driving south on Highway 89
along the west shore of Lake Cayuga
from Seneca Falls to Ithaca,
listening to a thin crackle of radio
before it’s lost beyond the hill:

Ken Burns is telling Terry Gross
the story of the Vietnam War
in three photographs —

A South Vietnamese general executing
a suspected North Vietnamese spy
just like walking down the street,
the moment the bullet strikes the brain

(why were we there, taking sides?)

A naked girl on fire, fleeing
her napalmed village

(the futile horrors we inflicted)

A young woman crouched over her dying friend,
shot by the National Guard at Kent State

(the war against our brothers and sisters at home)

and I say we and our because to seeing photos
on the front page of every hometown newspaper
made us all complicit in the violence.

Into It

It feels good to be writing,

a tentative beginning again,

like stepping barefoot into a pebbly-

shored lake, shallow algae-bloom waters

that will clarify as they deepen

until I progress to the level —

mid-thigh — where I can fall

forward through the gentle parting

of a sky-reflecting surface.

Ithaca

Atilt, clawed by water

Through limestone gorges

That rake the hillsides,

Intellect above, commerce below,

Isn’t that the way of the body?

 

Night

The future is a projected cone of light

We hurtle toward but never overtake,

Demarcated by rhythmic slashes

Thin and white, evenly spaced

Like so many routinary, endless days.

I focus on light and night, known and unknown,

On trajectory and stopping distance,

Until the startling flash of your green eyes

Grabs my attention for a treacherous instant

And registers on the insidious device

That tracks the pulse of my heart’s desire.