Poetry

Poetry

Just the Right Word

I pause
motionless
looking out the window
searching for that word
as if it would float by
or the different view
would allow it to re-emerge.

What is that word,
that idea,
of waiting
for a thought to come.

If it were on the internet,
la song streaming,
which then paused,
I’d know what to call it.
Buffering.

But my own thoughts?
I glace over to the rocking chair
with my daughter’s book bag
currently sitting in it.

Nothing.

I glance around the room
at clutter on the piano bench
or the kitchen table.

If I sort through this pile of papers,
or this collection of knick knacks,
will I find the word I am looking for.

As I try to conjure up the word,
I think of a grandfather that had Parkinson’s
or an uncle with Alzheimer’s.

But I’ve always been absent minded,
too easily distracted,
always searching
for just the right
word.

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Disruption

The beep, beep, beep of the clock radio disrupts my sleep
in the usual way as I start my daily routine.

On my laptop, I read of friends
disrupting their lives
to head to another conference
about disruption.

But the disruptions at the conference
are as likely to be as disruptive as the alarm clock.
They have become just another part
of the fabric of daily life
not really changing anything.

What would be truly disruptive
if not that new business plan
or piece of technology
that in the great scheme of things
really changes nothing?

Perhaps, a poem, a painting
or an unexpected smile.

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Bent Light

The light rays bend
off the thin layer
of hot air
resting on the summer pavement.

I remember seeing these magical puddles
appear and disappear
when looked at from just the right angle
riding in the family car
on the way to the lake.

After the inevitable thunderstorm
other light rays,
sunlight through the end of a shower,
would bend into beauty.

What other illusions
bringing beauty to this world
am I taking for granted
or perhaps not even seeing?

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Sweet Briar

“The only thing wrong with privilege,”
I remember a college professor once saying,
attributing the quote to Virginia Woolf.
“was that not everyone has it.”

I was sitting in an English class
at a small private
liberal arts college
in Ohio.

I had grown up in a college town
not much different than Wooster
so I didn’t even notice
my own privilege.

Instead, I only saw those
with greater privilege than I.

In the news today,
I read about a small private college
in Virginia
that is shutting down.

The plantation,
turned finishing school,
turned liberal arts college,
couldn’t survive
in the twenty-first century.

I imagine the students reading
Virginia Woolf,
longing for five hundred pounds
and a room of their own,
nodding their heads in agreement
with Woolf’s words about privilege.

I imagine the students reading
“Gone with the Wind”
comparing Sweet Briar to Tara
vowing they will never go hungry again.

I imagine the students reading
the Gospel lesson
about the Anointing of Jesus
and nodding in agreement
that it was a very beautiful thing.

I imagine the students reading
John Donne
and knowing that the bell tolls
not just for the closing of Sweet Briar,
but for all of us.

Mackerel Sky

A mackerel sky with contrails floated over a late winter field
as if Jackson Pollock had dripped white lines across the clouds.
The view out the windshield on the long commute to work
looked like a Neo Hudson School painting
with pink and light blue around the edges
the shades you might see on a baby blanket.

It was almost as if '
the sky
was giving birth
to a new morning
and a new season.

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