Sometimes you are all together.
Sometimes you are apart.
Sometimes you gather for a holiday.
Sometimes you go to work on your own.
Sometimes you eat in silence.
Sometimes your plate is full with laughter. Continue reading “Sometimes”
Category: Poems
Poetry from Oklahoma
Harness Up The Day
Oklahoma has created some stellar poets, to name a few–John Berryman, Joy Harjo, N. Scott Momaday, and Kevin Welch. Our fly-over state has also produced some first-rate songwriters who have the musical poet strong inside them: Garth Brooks, Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson, Reba McEntire, Leon Russell, Dwight Twilley, Bob Wills, and Kevin Welch again, among them. But our greatest poet has to be Woody Guthrie. And yes, he was a poet. Just read the lyrics to “Harness Up The Day”: Continue reading “Harness Up The Day”
Finding the Place Where
One day the question collides in you,
The curve of its newness slick behind
Your ear, mimicking that same arc,
Teasing you into listening, and this time,
To the way the wind whistles around
Your neck, the adjustment your feet
Make to the undulation of the earth
On this path not taken before to a place
Which tethers you without force
—Cool ageless stones lining
The threshold where you pause to drink
From a bowl of water that has appeared
To ease the burden of the new battle
Blushing its shame through your body. Continue reading “Finding the Place Where”
Flooded Town
Yonkers, Oklahoma, was abandoned and flooded
To create Lake Fort Gibson in 1933.
Eighty years later, in the scrub oaks of
Northern Wagoner County, it remains in
Foundation puzzles and a one-room skeleton
Of the school where Cherokees and whites
Learned together until water was needed more. Continue reading “Flooded Town”
Butch’s Painting
I have not written a Craig’s List poem in a while, a poem wherein I take a strange, sad, semi-literate, or otherwise entertaining ad from that fine website and write a poem to accompany, or perhaps, explain it in some way. I just found this ad in the General listings and went WHOA. What in the hell is going on in this painting? Continue reading “Butch’s Painting”
13 Welcome Back Things
Since we met over a year ago, Ken has sent me lists. He says he is not a poet, but I tend to disagree. Here is the list he sent when I returned from a long weekend in San Diego.
Red Dirt
Redbone Hounds
Ken
Needy Cats
Needy Ken
Cold Weather
Cold Cabbage
Ken Continue reading “13 Welcome Back Things”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 