One of my favorite memories from childhood was when our Mom made a treasure hunt for our birthday party (my sister Kelly and I share the same birthday—born same day a year apart). I remember particularly getting to the end of it and finding one of those wild-haired troll dolls in the wellhouse. Continue reading “Poem Caching”
Author: ROMPoetry
The Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry is an interactive museum where the common person and poetry meld. ROMP is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.
Arthur Before
“And thus the land of Cameliard was waste,
Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein,
And none or few to scare or chase the beast;
So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear
Came night and day, and rooted in the fields.”
From “The Coming of Arthur”
Lord Alfred Tennyson
There is no gentle wildness
In the land of wolf-like men.
There is no—
Wait, can you smell that?
Bitter as pokeberry
Tasting like mean vowels
The scent of a snarl Continue reading “Arthur Before”
Dream Arithmetic
Nobody needs it,
The loss of words, the alphabet
Of rock and sky, the dictionary
Spelling out the weight of pelican
Feathers and childbirth. Nobody
Needs the dream of images
Making no sense, the path
Of broken teeth and textbooks, Continue reading “Dream Arithmetic”
Art Crawl: Take Your Head Off
Art is inspiring, like any creative outlet, and I have an extremely wide view of what creative outlets are: the main thing is that they need to make you feel like Emily Dickinson described when reading poetry: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Continue reading “Art Crawl: Take Your Head Off”
A Reckoning
What happens to pine needles?
They get wise and smell strongly
Of no place you have ever been.
Where do daffodil petals go?
They rely on the wind and spread news
To the beetles and river rats. Continue reading “A Reckoning”
Red Fern
If you don’t believe a story
Can stay with you in the background
Like a picturesque tree you pose before
For all of your life, witness this:
I loved the baking powder can
That Billy saved his money in to buy
Those two redbone coonhounds. Continue reading “Red Fern”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 