Short Thoughts (poems of 8 lines or less)

-

A LONG TIME LOOKING AT THE FIRE


Ideas taller than the pines 

beneath which we attempt 

to reason out perplexities 

that only now occurred to me 

as needing solving. Damn 

I love and hate to think.


THOUGHTLESS


Envy of the ant who bites

my toe and knows he's met

the Queen’s criteria, while I 

am left to contemplate if I 

will measure up, or more

             what happens if I'm short.


EMBERS


Consider that the truth is

somewhere in the middle 

part, and what exactly that

would then necessitate

for those of us who want

to hold it in our fleshy hands.


ASH


It’s easy to articulate 

             a prayer and watch it 

flutter upwards with 

             the ash—what’s tough 

is saying, with the ash, 

           where or if it ever lands.


TOBACCO


If everything is hevel as 

the Teacher says, at least

it is a beautiful farewell

of rum and sugar-maple.



MEADOW


And maybe every blade 

is loud with testimony,

shouting in the whisper 

of the field that we’re

the evidence you curtly

    said ‘if only I could see.’


CHASING SPARKS


Yes, kaleidoscopic light

 is mesmerizing but it's not 

the thing itself, alluring

as the spark that beckons

in the night that's quite

             without sufficient heat.


TENNESSEE RIVER THEOLOGY


I'll agree, my friend, that God

is dead, the day the river sludges

to a halt. Till then, you'll find

me floating down it on an inner

tube without an oar,

loyal as a labrador.


ARTICULATING


Every now and then

                                 we say what must

be said, but if we're

                                  honest, mostly not.


PHILOSOPHY OF WORK

Considering the seed is deep beneath,

            and as it’s thus impossible to see

the source itself, it then becomes

            the work of us above to simply prune

a bloom or two and make a little vase,

            dispense some color round the place.


THIS CULTURAL MOMENT


Frostbite on sun-tanned toes. 

The doctor says it’s time to do 

what must be done. I’d ask 

for Novocaine but I’m a rat

and rats can’t speak. Wait, 

can rats even get frostbite?

This world just ain’t right. 

             Chop. Awake, I still think that.


VISITOR


It wasn’t lack of welcome, warmth, 

compelled him slip out back before

the sacrament. No, in fact it was 

the opposite, he now recalls. Smiles 

fluttered weightless in the rafters.

             The dresses had no pleats, no tears.


IF SOMEWHERE IF IS WHEN

that would reorient, well, everything, 
        and it would be imperative
                        to point,
         despite inertia, There,
     if only in the general direction.


CATERPILLAR

Should we really be surprised 

to find our caterpillar minds 

incapable of apprehending the 

immensity of butterfly reality?


TUESDAYS CALL FOR FAITH


We get a dog today, and hopefully

within the year a baby too, 

the human kind. ‘Ready’ 

is a fallacy for fools.



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