Hanging in a leaden sky
Gulls, in tight formation, fly.
Heavy snow's cascading flare
Sodium sharpness filling air.

Heaving waves carousing fen
Ocean's scent, aloft.. .and then
The skiff with oarsman pulling tight
Materializing from the night

Braving, now, a heavy sea
Puffing pipe, irreverently.
Oblivious of mounting gale
Abandons oar to set a sail

Skimming sharp to gravel beach
Shrugs aside hazards reach.
Wading into pounding foam
Smiling thought of ***, at home.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

~Especially For our own poet, Immortality~

we all dream for a few seconds,
mostly when we are younger,
like, say, s e v e n t e e n, that
something, we might be~come,
known for, perhaps even believing
our names|our poems might be read,
a hundred and one years on…

periodic, episodic,doesn’t last long,
though it
does get repeated every
now and then, and  then again,
each time, the notion disappears
faster, sure, better things to dream
about, better hopes more closely
held, tangible tasting, envisioning,
deserving for intensely scheming,
using that double edged
s~word,
realistic,
and even, in the
planning, schemin’ dreamin’
always a nagging fearin’
can
they really
could come true

others fantasize,
, that class of crazy dreamers,
standing at an airport gate,
hear a call out your name,
and someone will,
from behind, tap you on the
shoulder and asks, shyly

hey, you wouldn’t be that person
who writes
poetry on HP?

unlikely of course, odds against,
whoa,
even worse
than winning a lottery jackpot prize

but then again, surprise always
favors biting you on,
well, them tender places,
and a day comes,
when  a younger poet, amazes, takes the time,
makes the effort to look up your older
writs, languishing in bits of bytes on an
unknown server, aged  graying from
relentless time,
and the absence of eyes,
being read, thereby re~realized,
revitalized,
visualized, inhaling light+ air,
away wiping
the dust and webs of  suffered mortality
and, that silly notion escapes it grave,
and you writer, run into an encounter
with an old fantasy, resurrected and
you too reread that old poem, issuing s
voluble ****!, not half bad, and restoring
that momentary potent potentiality of
it
surviving past the beyond date of expiry,
and then, another is read, & another,
swallowing a pill stronger
than a a Doctors’s best gurss forecast
of 20 more years you’ll live,
for an actualized prophecy now
is tangent tangible,
like mouth to mouth-resuscitation
and you, unusually,
think once more about tomorrow,
exhaling the headyatmosphere
of a rainy forest,
well appreciating, laughing at the future,
for here, she has shared but penned
but twenty four original poems,

me,
thousands open and disguised, and my newly formed grin is now for her,
for now my breath and its baggage of a fantasy, may
be coming her
reality realized?

and I will surely still be an
avid cheerleader
for her, for you, a
devoted
follower-in-absentia

~For Pradip~*
Pradip: who yet walks among we useless

<>

this
layabout in my drafts,
driftwood in a sea of
******* poems in a circumscribed
hell
for who knows for how long,

all that is certain is that
summer ending dreading,
is in full force
now marching
forward,  
with the end of days

of body chilling whipped winds,
cold so paining no one be bothering
to breathe out white steamy curses
and life is a half a calendar league
too far to be believed

I mate much coffee imbibed,
the cheeks wet incessant,
no error, the death thots~
throes come in waves persistent,
like the monsoons we’ve survived,

it’s easier to recall army of  losses
than the few
teaspoons victories,
who cares,
they plentiful companions,
reliable,
and we
share them with cups of black tea,
salted by our tiny tears that this too
shall past

for:*

it’s the seasonality of our lives,
and these are the  days of
unending unendurable
grayscale

genetic & embedded in both
the left and right brains and
heart muscles, pores and parts
that participate in the body’s
daily ritual colloquium regarding
the necessary amount of magic
needed, upkeep required,
to please the Lord, 
whose designers were
co~missioned,
tasked-to make a self healing
being, with a reasonable shelf
life but with built-in imperfections
and to struggle and to
honor  that idea that we born blind
and our goal is
learning to see,
envision
our better
version

the
correct redirection of
constant course corrections
using the
secret compass chord
playing on the harp of our
heart strings

<•>

903am
1/23/25
on a day of addition and sub traction

Disclaimer:
an unintended very long poem
from a very long walk,
hoping it might come
to rest within your
heart
but feel free to go your own,
another direction
<•>

“Another writer told me a few weeks ago of his New England Yankee mother,
who believed there are no problems
that aren’t made at least slightly better
by a long walk, and
none that are made worse.“
<•>

a moderate walker am I,
on the Promenade,
hard by the wide & narrow strait,
a tidal estuary, that divides our urban island
from its suburban Longer cousin,

this my path, most oft traversed,
a time spent usually creating,
reciprocating verses from a
copulating mind

every walking expedition is
an-in-transit composition,
an enchantment by a song
anointed, appointed and a
derivation
of a song about
going home

the last of my family
to be buried, l,
to be interred,
finally grounded,
in a park of cedar trees,
next to my immediates,
for can’t think of any other place
that might, would willingly,
not resist mightily, taking me in

it will thy will that they bury me
there if they can get permission
from the heavenly authorities,
but told the betting odds
are 3 to 1
against,
the Lords of song not so happily
with the quantity and the quality
of my unseeded spilled,
of my un-indeeded actions,
they were not entirely
rainbow colored,
some very berry blackened,
urgently misdelivered
with no justifiable delicacy
warranting memorizing or
further discussion

most likely will continue
to remain a pedestrian,
though unlikely I’ll have to
look both waysides before
crossing over

I’ll carry copies of  my scriptures,
psalms and even my one and only
flawless poem in hand,
wrote here so long ago,
s small proof that my theorems
were not
always entirely wrong,
but my replica action figurines,
were posed and struck,
were sufficient evidences
that my overall demeanor
of demeaned marks,
were negative numbered,
irony, they were unlettered
and ungraded,
mostly average, only worthy
of a place in the sadeyed lowlands

So walk I shall,
hoping they give me decent
walking & wailing shoes,
a warm suit,
a fedora or a watch cap,
cause it is more than chilly
down by the uninhabited riversides

this thinning vision is not
tinged with
any tingling regret,
nor sorrow,
what I did, what I wrote,
every word mine alone,
the way I lived,
walking solitaire is
something grown quite accustomed,
and a pretty fair pre~text of a
judgement coming
down

on the morrow,
will walk with no
measurements needed,
not speed, nor distance,
not counting crows or any other
unenumerated birds of a feather,
those on a wire or a river railing
spying observers watching,
who will go unnumbered,
as will all my
steps of no value

so this poem’s title absolute right,
no needs for solving
for absolutions,
was never ever sorry for
taking a walk,
and there are no more vocabulary
modifiers,
unneeded words left, like,

but nonetheless

only
just don’t know how
this river poem got
so long