poetry – Page 64 – don't confuse the narrator

in the clouds

Three weeks ago I wrote that my external hard drive was refusing to boot. Faced with the prospect of losing ten years worth of photos, writing and other memories, I managed to remain optimistic.

I finally took the drive down to the shop earlier this week and have spent a tense few days waiting for news. The chap now tells me that he thinks he has managed to recover everything. To avoid a repetition of the problem, he recommends that I start storing things in the cloud.
Continue reading “in the clouds”

the big picture

Looking through my photo files for ideas for a blog post, I find mostly close ups of flowers and insects. Panoramic views are few and far between, and pictures of people are even less frequent. Even if a scene could be a landscape, my focus is usually on details.
Continue reading “the big picture”

the tender-hearted artichoke

artichoke flower beginning to open on the plant

I was so impressed by this glorious artichoke plant with its flowers in all the different stages that I thought about writing a poem.

Then I remembered that Neruda had already written an Ode to the artichoke.
Continue reading

the poet’s voice

Sometimes the sky seems solid: there are no thoughts; no words; no voice. Sometimes there seems to be no poet.

Aphonia

I have lost my voice.
The murmur of the traffic is enough
to drown the sound of my ideas. Star grit,
like broken oyster shells, embeds itself
in my soft palate and I choke
on smoky clouds as I aspire
to the feathered tops of pine trees.

The moon dissolves,
a luminescent coughdrop,
liquid on my tongue.

kisses

For no good reason, other than that it was growing close to a stone church wall, this flower reminded me of a poem written on a trip to the fiestas in southern Spain.

I remember taking an early draft to the local writers’ group for comments and being disconcerted when one of the women said she felt unqualified to comment because she didn’t know what I meant by kisses.

It’s true that I sometimes use everyday images in my poetry to represent bigger issues, but this wasn’t meant to be any kind of trick.

Sometimes, even when wrapped up in the weird perspective and mixed metaphors of an imperfect poem, a kiss is just a kiss.
Continue reading “kisses”