Arts
The Arts section of Orient Lodge
The Samuel Baldwin Memorial Ingress Portal
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/08/2015 - 19:58The cars zoomed by
the large rock
with the rusting bronze
plague
and the small American Flag
planted by the D.A.R.
No one,
except for the town historian,
an avid genealogist,
who served on the school board,
knew anything
about this
revolutionary war
hero,
the first cousin
of her fourth great grandfather
on her mother’s side.
But now,
late at night
young men with cellphones
stop beside the monument
playing
a twenty first century
game of war.
Note: This was written for a writers prompt to describe a landmark. I took a different angle on this and described the landmark, first in terms of the actual, someone obscure landmark, and then brought in aspects of the game Ingress, played on cellphones, in which landmarks are ‘portals’ in the game.
Jury Duty
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/06/2015 - 19:26The flag pole stands
in the city park
amidst trees
longing for forests
surrounded by three story
brick buildings
out of a low budget
western
or a nineteen fifties
documentary
about the American Dream.
Out of the windows
of a dingy old
court room
potential jurors
stare
waiting for their moment
to serve justice.
Swaying
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/04/2015 - 19:57Too little sleep
and too much
cold and damp
has left me felling
rundown
vulnerable.
The car is acting up,
systems around the house
are not running
as smoothly
as should be
only adding
to the fatigue.
At church this morning
a baby cried
inconsolably.
She had just eaten
and probably needed to burp.
The mother rocked her
back and forth
patting her back
hoping to quiet her
though I doubt anyone
in the congregation minded.
I remembered
trying to comfort my daughters,
their heads on my shoulder
just above my heart,
swaying back and forth.
I found myself swaying
as we prayed
for the victims of shootings,
of floods,
of cancer,
of loneliness,
holding these people in my heart,
swaying.
Atonement
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 09/23/2015 - 12:11The fluffy small clouds
floated blissfully
in the crisp clear
autumn sky
as small birds
played
in the breezes.
“Who could not praise God
on a day like this?”
I thought to myself
as I approached
the cemetery
where a young mother
cried
over her son’s
grave.
But it wasn’t my son
or my fault.
Nearby, the birds sang joyfully
as they searched for food.
“I’m just living my life
as best I can”,
I thought to myself
as I pondered suffering.
“I don’t add to it,
do I?”
Sure, I’ve squabbled with friends,
causing them distress,
but not enough
to ruin a beautiful day?
I’ve benefited
from the circumstances of my birth.
Not deliberately, not consciously,
but certainly not enough
to contribute
to the death
of a young black man?
I’ve sought to send forth
tiny ripples of hope
but have I sent forth,
unaware,
greater ripples of hurt?
I ponder these things
on The Day of Atonement
and cry out
“Forgive me”
A little bird looks up at me
quizzically chirps
and now the bird is silent too.
Notes: I wrote this on Yom Kippur, 2015 as I contemplated my own unexplored faults. The "tiny ripples of hope" come from Robert Kennedy's great Ripple of Hope speech. "and now the bird is silent too" comes from the poem "Little Unwritten Book" by Charles Simic by way of a writers prompt where I was challenged to use that line (or a couple others) as the last line of a poem.
Poetry Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/12/2015 - 21:50This morning, I went to a poetry group in Wallingford. I shared my poem, Less Quiet Desperation. Before, and for that matter, afterwards, I spent some time cleaning up my poems on this website. I set up a Drupal Book, Poetry Collection 1 where I started to organize some of my poems. Over the coming days, I hope to further organize my poems, as well as work on certain revisions.
As I organized the website, I did a little checking of Google Analytics as well as checking references to me in Google search. I discovered that someone has been taking readings of poems I did for Librivox many years ago, and putting them up on Youtube. The LIbrivox recordings also showed up on Goodreads
