Category Archives: Poems

That winter in Palavas

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That winter in Palavas
We pulled our coats about us
And stamped our way
Along the bundled beach
Brisk wind whipping
Through our young hearts
Sparkles gleaming from the prancing shore
We caught shelter
Among the sun-slanted shadows
From the slow cadence of the surf

Rush…rush…rush

Down the beach
Two hale young men
Germans by the look of them
Dressed in scantly painted
Swimming briefs
Tossed a medicine ball
Back and forth in rhythm with
Weathered waves
Determined beyond all reason
To return to work
All a-dusk and rightly trim

Later, some chance-encountered lads
Suggested an evening in Grand Motte
“We’re not rich!” I laughed

But we were

Stranded by morning

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Serenity falls
Into the open morning
Stifling a yawn
Life ain’t what I thought it was
All those years ago

In the end, all the pain and joy
Alike

Fell in a grand heap
And life, stripped bare
More like a humping walrus
Than a lame gazelle

A poet once told me
He’d rather write about
Cabbages

The coast of never

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Here’s a little quatrain for your Monday amusement:

On the coast of never
What sailing there will be
Our sacred bonds we’ll sever
And cast ourselves upon the sea

Quanta

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I try to find myself
Amidst the debris of living
The present is not now
The past is open to conjecture
The future a mere whimsy
A thin cloud composed of remembrance and hope

I know faith and philosophy
That’s not my point

Amidst the clatter of thinking
Emerging notions like stray photons
Almost grasped, almost seen
Only to wink away
Just at the moment of recognition
There still comes something familiar
Some pattern
Some wrinkle of repetition
Just enough to grab a flimsy hold —
As if on reality

Shall I say a thing
Hoping for some connection
Some proof of contingency?

All there is is is

Three haikus

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The changing seasons always seem to beg for conciseness. And it is National Poetry day.

Seasons are not rounds
Each reflecting the other
Then why these same sighs?

Fall is upon us
Old winter waits patiently
Counting cricket calls

Bees make love
To the last blossoms
Of summer