An hour of sun, some
more rain. I walk in the crowd.
How close we live here
in contingency,
keep promises to strangers,
rarely if ever
touch, but, being touched,
it’s with apologies forth-
coming and blushes.
Author: Tom D'Evelyn
Tom D'Evelyn is a private editor and writing tutor in Cranston RI and, thanks to the web, across the US and in the UK. He can be reached at tom.develyn@comcast.net. D'Evelyn has a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Before retiring he held positions at The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard University Press, Boston University and Brown University. He ran a literary agency for ten years, publishing books by Leonard Nathan and Arthur Quinn, among others. Before moving to Portland OR he was managing editor at Single Island Press, Portsmouth NH. He blogs at http://tdevelyn.com and other sites.
The Polished Dance Floor
Hardy and Herrick,
poets of the dance of time
in times trans-shifting,
I call on you midst
laptops and hunched citizens
of now, you call me,
an old man smiling
to himself, to join you on
the polished dance floor.
Festive
The baker who brings
me hot bread sings as she whips
butter and honey.
I’m still cold, the wind
almost kept me from meeting
you wherever you
are. Have some hot bread
slathered with honey butter.
We’re but rags and bones.
Saying No
Mt. Hood can’t be seen
this gray January day.
I face its snowy
top. I take a break
from the news, uniformly
bad, of our tyrant.
People look at me,
doubting. Just a few minutes
to say no in peace
Grand Central
This place a bird cage
today. The coffee alone
seeks the silence with-
in. The voices blur
into one blur. The coffee’s
connectivity
releases the birds.
Now a new poem can breathe
its own-most silence.
Tears, Idle Tears
The bush pokes out of
the snow — it’s a rose!– not here,
back in New England.
Midflight over the
dark Atlantic, refugees
learn the news: once there
our homegrown tyrant
will return them to their own
tyrant, just because.
I sip English Break-
fast tea. I thaw. Tears begin
to flow more freely
Sparrow
The more precious
in the dewy boxwood, song,
nothing to speak of,
sparrow all alone,
when you flit off you’re too quick
for the following
eye. The ear remains
open but it avails not.
Praise is in order.
Gnoseological
A whiff of garlic
from the mud in the gutter
communicates hope.
The body tenses
for Spring. Goodbye gnostic double,
other, body bag,
(thank you Charles Wright).
This old skin breathes the language
of the human nose.
A Gift to Go With
As the paths soften,
lime-green through the fog, I
second-guess myself–
no bottom to that.
Oh yes, bottomless bottom,
nothing to push off
from, something to let
be, a beginning of ends,
a gift to go with.
Just One of Those Things
Sam Hamill, who knows,
apropos of Basho’s old
pond says some poems
open as they end.
I think about that walking,
waking up, going
to bed. Maybe life
itself’s ‘open/shut/open’–
just one of those things.
