The Age Of Time

Caught between
the billboards 
& the funeral parlor
plastic Jesus
on the porch
saves no souls.

Ghosts still roam
about in our lives.
Spirits & souls captured in photos
are true in telling us this.

Icons of our
emptiness
persist where sorrows
drown in loneliness.

We dawn the garment of age
as we note the wristwatch
worn by a five-year-old child,
aware the construct of time
is left to those who tell
what comes to pass.

In My Time

We who hold this ground
plough forward 
listening for the heartbeats of our children
from afar
trusting that the song
we sang at bedtime
still resonates a primal note
and calls 
to each return.

Tell us the stories 
you have learned
every now and then.

This written path
stones of conscious note 
stacked in corners
carried about
shuffled and ordered
every so often 
torn out
and sent with an envelope
addressed to another.

I hold my ground
as best I can.

Over time patterns emerge
I am aging as fast
as the days will carry me
I beat back the undergrowth
of useless information
In the moment
I watch color, pattern, movement

I patch the boards
in harbors of doubt
where ill winds blow.

The Poet's Only Job

Mind’s eye has
found a gap
between this 
moment and
the next.

Here, day-parts
of delirium and
ecstasy are passed
hand to hand
among children
amid questions
taunts and shouts.

When the muse
takes 5, this
indeterminate
fate is secured
only by the 
tether of love

otherwise cast 
to drift balloon
no string.

Daniel

The white duck
and the little boy
      holding his red hat
      in one hand and
      a bag of biscuits
      in the other
race toward each other
meeting
near a tree
at the side of the pond.

She swims in circles
diving for breadcrumbs
he breaking biscuits
piece by piece
tossing them
on the water
until the bag is
done.

Running back breathless
he exclaims,
She sure is a lucky duck!

Heartwood

(for Jeanette)

There is a wild rustling
in the pine trees this morning
restless notes the wind chimes ring
a bit of howling at the corners of the porch
every now and then

In the scratch pad white of waking 
kaleidoscopic visions
at the end of sleep
fade away
fade
and can't be found again
gone to hide
I look around but all I saw is gone
just the disquiet
of knowing remains

So the dogs
& so the day
a siren far across the Stoney Run
a train whistle sometimes late at night
the spatter of raindrops at the window

How far away 
the heavy lifting of despair
In the wind the trees can only flail in place
bending, sweeping side to side
sometimes thrashing
lest they fling a broken branch
or break in half
or worst of all give up & let their roots be pulled away
from the ground.

Birds Awake All Night

(for Matthew, lost child)

Whistle from lungs
spent years in the drawing 
of breath
we all have so much to live for.

Life is spark
If spark, now we must run.

Nests are built
and storms come
wind blows nest from tree -  or
       -  act of God  -  some ire
at callous indifference among us.

As in fields of harvest past
work must continue on till done.

Sing sing, sing along with me
for song is the breath in our lungs.

We are the church bells
ringing in our ears
We are the singing birds, the cawing birds
the chirping birds
squirrels chasing through branches
distant sound of traffic and the rumbling
of a freight train
miles away.

We are the august light
on the silent moor
where land meets water
       —      the grand thoughts,
petty contrivances, we are subtle shades
of broken light, the silver tipped buds
of early spring and the dense dark woods
ever green. 

We are the taut wooden frame of our chair
a folded vessel of thoughts and limbs/we sit
we smell each new morning
the hair of our children is
ever-sweet, we are the salt spray 
and we are the mountain laurel
We are bones and flesh and history.

Pouring through memories
each nick or scar
smile or hug
that makes a life
is what we know.

From the womb
we tumble into the light
all heaven on Earth ensues
for the cry of life in the World
escapes from my lungs
and I can’t see from now to tomorrow.

Life and love overwhelm me
and I am just this: a note
in the song, in the lives and the work
and I am by the grace, and I am of the 
hope and I will for the moment
this life of my own.

I’m alive. I’m in love. I’m in
desperate abandon
unknown, unaware
So lost in the tangle of stars
in the sky and wind
in the leaves;
so dark at the hour of midnight.

© Paul Bartlett, all rights reserved