StarPoet Newsletter Vol. XI, No. XXIII

Slow gray skies unspecify
Morning's drift to afternoon,
Time no longer calculates
The sun's hidden path,
Night will fall
Without day fully rising.

The flesh says "hole up,"
"Go to sleep for a rest;"
My heart pumps listlessly
As my brain continues counting
The tick and the tock,
The woof and the weave,
And all of the moments inbetween.

Noun, verb, a handful of adjectives,
Search for a connection with the neural interface;
Consciousness rigorously sidesteps the words,
Demanding a more interesting pallette
Before considering even a glimpse of meaning.

The poet sits, playing with vowels and consonants,
The perfect sound and syllable
To capture the morning's babble
Before the phonemes are washed away
Like pollen fallen in an April rain.

Unlike Lady GaGa,
I perform without a cheering audience;
I have no fans dancing in my aisles,
No lighters burning in my darknesses,
No young armed rows swaying nightly.

I am, for want of better words,
A working girl, an eight to five poet
Who struggles to make rhymes meet
And her meter run smoothly unnoticed.

If we assume an hour a poem,
Give or take several revisions,
I spend 26 days 24-7 each year
Producing what is read at StarPoet;

Eighty workdays a calendar,
Sixteen weeks of annual effort
Without time off for sick leave
Creating the newsletter for eleven years.

What else should a working girl do,
Take a gig with a rock and roll band?

Two geese flying low
A few feet from the ground,
Swooping over the bank
Down into the run
Still flush from yesterday's rain.

Their honks, a few feet away,
Cause me to frantically search for a bus
Or a backing truck so I may move my body
Out of the way; but there is only
The graceful geese and the silly smile
They left on my face.

We met in Ceylon
When we both were in the OSS;
She went her way, I, mine,
And the decades passed
Until we met again;
Then, to my surprise,
But not hers, she always knew,
We fell in love.  How different
Would the world be
If we knew what we know
When first we smiled,
Nodded our heads,
And said hello.

A joyous spring day after last night's
Thunder, lightning and tornado watch,
A light breeze shakes the treeline,
Rattles the leaves, warns the squirrels
To be extra careful when they jump,
Take flight between the limbs;
I sit watching the sunset,
A dull thing of gray and pale yellow
Against the dimming sky, sipping coffee
While the soundtrack from Mama Mia
Plays out in the background
To the distant counterpoint of a siren's wail:
I do believe it's finally time
To put the snow shovel back away
Without upsetting the winter gods.

We are no less human
That we are earth's mammal,
A primate extraordinary
Who outbred our competitors;
We are a most cunning animal
Who constructs our claws
With our neurons and synapses
Not our muscle.  The world is ours
And we are the world's,
Inseparable from the planet
And evolution's slow hand,
But separate we will;
If not this century, then the next,
But inevitably we will leave,
Extend our reach beyond the moon
And low earth orbit, to Mars,
To Jupiter, to the stars beyond
This singular system,
This warm, lifegiving sun
That gave us time, precious time
To grow conscious, become erect,
And learn the mysteries,
The majesty and the beauty
Of a universe that extends
As far as our minds will take us
And beckons us come forth
From the safety of our pale blue dot
And the cool, green hills
That raised us up.

If I had not met Carl Sagan
Or read Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein,
I would not be StarPoet
Anymore than if I skipped over
Walt or William or Mother Sappho
And the race for my great white whale.

At times I seem to be running
Some sort of triage for poetry,
A one woman attempt to save the words
From universities and the stench
Of post-doctoral publications.

Or perhaps I am merely mad
And life would be better
If I would forget what the muse
Demands of me.

I have trouble detaching
From my poetry when I finish;
The emotions linger on no matter
They're mine or someone else's,
Or no one's I actually know;
The pain, the joy, the happiness,
The anger and the tears,
They're all here, one with the poet
Who knows no other way
To do her job to her own
Or her muse's satisfaction.

In Arlington and Flanders Fields,
At Gettysburg and Antietam,
On the Plain of Jars and Normandy Beach,
And in the waters around the Arizona,
Americans have died, buried and forgotten
By politicians and academics who seek
Grander colors in their well thought histories.

Even the families, in time, forget
Stories of great uncles suddenly at Pearl,
Grandfathers lost in some lush Asian jungle;
Living memory passes quickly,
Individuals blur then vanish,
Hallowed grounds soaked with blood
Fade into cool black text upon white pages.

I sit here on still another Memorial Day,
Remembering all those I have known,
Their voices and their laughter,
Their smiles and our kisses,
Wishing I could touch them once more.