This morning in the dark
The rain fell steadily
Yet a male robin sang and sang
As if he knows that every morning
Will be as joyous as today’s
From now ‘til autumn
Tag Archives: national poetry month
April Morning
Filed under Poetry
Care of the Machine – Poem for April 10 – National Poetry Month
The wives slept
While the men worked
Through the night
Each man at his desk
His face reflecting
The glow of a screen
The men worked
For the Corporation
–The sole employer
A living entity
Growing, consuming
And adapting
Operating, once with
Typewriters and forms
Folders and cabinets
‘Til the chief
Ordered the men
“Build a machine!”
One man created its mind
The paths into it
And the ways out
A second man wrote instructions
Shaped like poems
For the machine-mind to read
A third man built a translator
So the machine could talk
To other machines
Thus the Corporation’s organs
Became keyboards and screens
File and servers
And the men’s work
Became care
Of the machine
Which could only be done
At night
When they induced its sleep
And as the machine slept
The men worked
Through the night
Filed under Poetry
Sympathy to Man – Poem 5 of 30 for National Poetry Month
What Man built
Became too complex
I don’t mean fire or wheel
Those could be stopped
Not bullet or bomb
Both were simple and dumb
Not light, or radio, or phone
Once, a boy could build them
Not even early computers
Those, too, were built in basements
And when they talked to each other
Man would chaperone
No…
Man’s demise
Was not these
Damn the device!
And the information on which it thrived!
Damn all computers
That tried to be!
Sympathy to Man, extinct Man
For not using his mind
To know
Where to stop
Filed under Poetry
Sanctuary – Poem 3 of 30 for National Poetry Month
The lighting’s kept down, here
Except over the stage
Where black cans beam down
Bright red, blue, and green
On a man with a hollow guitar
In a long, leather jacket
Under a leather, western hat
His face too, like leather
A face clean, but with lines
And the beginning of a gray beard
Dark eyes, understanding
And at ease
It’s sanctuary here
From everyone he knows
He presses the strings to the frets
And strums
Sings out his day
His month, his year
Sings about Man
The machine, the slave
Thrown into life
To work for food
Sings about Man
The being, the soul
Who needs to do something
And to tell someone about it
When he’s sung out
He steps off stage
And walks out the door
Onto an empty street
Where lamps beam down
Orange cones of light
That he walks through, alone
To his car at a curb
He drives away, alone
Into the dark
To tomorrow’s problems
To tomorrow’s songs
Filed under Poetry
A Sign That It’s Warm Enough – Poem 2 of 30 for National Poetry Month
Evening drive home
Tollway, then divided highway
Then neighborhood street
The goal is to do it
Without stopping
Anything, not to stop
This evening I made good time
Less traffic
Since tomorrow is Good Friday
At my street
I pressed the opener
Then turned into the driveway
To roll
Straight up
Into the garage
But I stopped
About fifteen feet short
Not to crash into…
The robins
Three of them close together
In low-altitude battle
Flitting
Rising and falling
Then landing and scurrying
A sign that it’s warm
Enough to open the windows
For a while
To lie in bed and listen
To the frogs’ continuous croaking
More like creaking
Like the sound of a finger
Across the thin upturned teeth
Of a black, plastic comb
The frogs’ creaking
Carried my wife to dreaming
While I stayed awake
Listening past the frogs
To the far-off engine whine
Of a motorcycle
The sound on a highway
A rider leaning forward
Accelerating into the night
Filed under Poetry
Lenses – Poem 1 of 30 for National Poetry Month
I see better
When I look through lenses made
For me
Way ahead, that street sign’s
White letters have edges
Straight and curved against the green aluminum
At home
The book’s black-ink letters
Rise from the cream-colored page
When it’s this clear
It goes straight into my mind
It goes right into place
Good for what I’m about to see
Now, to get something for
Everything else
Filed under Poetry
