“Somewhere”

Somewhere the strange
sigh of the
wind moves
the dried-out
leaves in
a patch of
buttery sunlight

Somewhere a train
whistle screeches,
long and solemn,
as it approaches
the last
stop of its
long and winding
day

Somewhere the weekday,
rush-hour mob
of citizens
push their way
through the hubbub
in the
finite cycles of
their
monotonous lives

Somewhere light is
reflected off
the surface
of a pond
and I become
aware
of the passing seconds
and, also, of
their woven
melodies

“Panorama”

Clouds and Sky, San Francisco

By the late afternoon,
the impeccably blue
sky had partially broken through
the dense layer of
clouds and fog, reminiscent of so many San Francisco
mornings.

Looking up:
on the corner
two identical towers and a geometric rose window,
a white cathedral,
was revealed in the soft sunlight,
the phone lines intersected,
a antique clock hung above a Chinese sign
of gleaming red characters.

Around the scene the breeze
blew the flags, leaves, scarfs;
the melody of Italian music mingled
with the rhythms of Chinatown,
and the hour was rung in,
loud and clear,
by the Ferry Building
as the spirit of imagination
and the world of reality
seemed to collide.

“Remnant”

Downtown Winston-Salem

Light bounces of the smooth surface of a glass window
in a wide spectrum of color
as
the drone of an airplane
is blended with
the reverberating echoes of car horns, train whistles
and contrasted with
the passing of wind through papery, translucent leaves
on a lop-sided tree near the tracks

faded advertisements
once painted on gleaming, brick warehouses and factories,
have now lost their glow and
exist, waiting;
ghosts of the old economy, of the flourishing profits
of the fortunate and the toil of the unfortunate
to achieve a shared goal
in the
solemn light, evoking thought from the
distant yet
recognizable past of
unobtainable love, prospering riches, forgotten dreams
all too great to
last;
all lost when the worn bricks of the colossus:
the formidable achievement
tumbled into a heaping pile and all
that remains
the same
is the undying light and
mankind’s ingnorance
subtly
reminding us of the fates of our
menagerie of ancestors
who
dwelled and dwindled
in the
sordid tenant houses or the well-kept Victorians
on the west side of town
but
were all immersed in the ephemeral, golden
“gilded” age
unaware that the prosperity
would not last
but, instead, become
a romanticized remnant,
the worn memory
of
future generations

“Ginkgo”

San Francisco, CA

On the brick walkway, through the park,
is a collection of
last night’s rainwater; its surface,
being barely speckled with dirt,
reflects the surroundings
clearly: a slim tree, its
leaves thinning in the
October wind, stands erect
before the aged stone wall,
above: the sky, in its vivid
shade as it only is in fall, it seems,
is covered in swiftly moving
clouds.

A yellow, fan-shaped leaf
breaks free from its branch
on the tree and
swirls to the ground,
next to a drain hole
where a crumpled, faded
French newspaper and an
assortment of leaves
block the flow of
water as a late-afternoon
storm picks up power,
scattering the leaves,
yellowed from age, across
the shadowed grass.

A Rainforest Poem

California Academy of Sciences

In a remote region of the Amazon,
a butterfly
of a bright orange color
gently flaps its wings
and
flutters.

Around the butterfly
the thick, humid air
that seems to foresee
a coming shower
is moved.

Under the forest canopy
is is a great deal darker
than above,
light falls in speckled
patterns as the leaves
move in the
stormy currents of wind.

In the towering trees,
the bird,
tired from its seemingly long life
of many lasting days
strung together,
lazily moves
from one branch
to another.

Through all this,
the river flows,
its clear surface
filled with images of
mingling leaves and light.

Everything seems brighter
in the rainforest,
I thought,
excepting the small amount of
light the thick leaves
allow to steep through
their waxy, green surfaces.

Quotable Poem of the Month

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Flowers on the Coastal Trail-San Francisco, CA