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  Aug 2017 Where Shelter
Nat Lipstadt
Note to Self (and Grace)
____

the simplest bottom line that tops off,
a writ that begins and ends
with its title of
perfect clarity.  

in my brief unremarkable existential passage
the enemy within needs our greatest concentration,
the floods, the pretty ravages, that come unannounced,
from outside creeping in
time-slow and life-sudden,
can't do much about

but the friendly enemies residing in the places hiding
where we have'em close kept, so handy for an instant
royal summons,
thems the apples poisoned we got to worry about,
the ones we grew from a tree planted from seeds in a package that came with a friendly note from the
Surgeon General saying,
"burn the contents of this container,
you'll never finish paying if you let them get planted,"


and yes,
it is 1:54am wide awake and still dying slow
a bit daily,
laughing that I entered myself in a race crazy,
where I am a
a guaranteed loser

so we end where we were born,
let it go.
survive, the (dis)order of the day
and it is
2:10am on just another Thursday,
that will end in the accord
of its own discord

<£>

2:14am

"just one phone call from our knees."
Matt Kearney
  Aug 2017 Where Shelter
K Balachandran
From the past, a miracle; I come back here  alive!
The matter recycled, many times over has such verve.
Stardust, lulled by cosmic hum, minerals and metals,
The spirit transcending  timelessly is infused in to it!

Water, your messenger stimulates my whole being.
With dew drops ,fog, ice  and steam my skin is burnished.
I am a flow perennial, ever one with the water's quest
Drenched all over, I  drink rain water, get inebriated.

Wind, inconsistent, wearing a robe of smoke, now and then,
Breathed in to me currents generously  and said"Come alive"
Atop the hills I dance with the wind,the element of freedom,
Fly down like a colorful kite, in my wishful recurring dreams.

I walk the earth, like every man fighting his war to survive
The red earth like mother bleeds love for me, cheers me up,
Son of the soil,am I, ****** earth stimulates my all senses
I smear myself with sticky mud, green,then grows therein.

Your note of love I await, comes streaming in the  light,
Flashing over clouds, green leaves,waves and skylight.
My love undying keeps awake,waiting for a sign of yours.
To join you in the time you decide for me to take your hand.

Just an instrument am I, your love invents, to unite all together,
In your eternal spirit I  too move,a continuing love story for ever.
  Aug 2017 Where Shelter
Nat Lipstadt
for Harlon Rivers

the river potion,
the river portent,
the river potent

it is all of these and not one

he is bank sided,
observing the false idols,
the image mirrored
in the glass of the river

transfigured molecularly
he becomes something ferried frothily, forcefully

as if a twig
or a small thing of human manufacture,
an object tossed up airborne-repeatedly

his poetry:
the clash of particles at the many junctions
of objects and water, eddies and the currents,
ceaselessly circumnavigating,  
searching revisionary pathways

directed,
but randomized,
prisoner of the flows,
servant to the wind's directives and the
earths magnetic indivisible undulating waves

thinking,
this life,
its unsteady gait, 
the irreverent wavering of drunkenness
resultant from potent potions,
portents of inopportune position

in him,
my own histories, 
my poetic recordings
also become
water borne,
watermarked,
replayed back for me,
for erasure, censure, closure
and rededication

this River
is a tapestry,
a torn map,
drawn on broken shards
of slivered water,
living with all the others

but we,
are the untitled,
we,
are the un-entitled,
and he is the
Rivers

<•>
Oct. 20, 2016

harlon is one of the best poets here
if you are new to his writing, be sure to tell him honestly what you think...

his work can be found under
https://hellopoetry.com/harlon-rivers/  
Uncover him, and discover yourself within

2013
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/444023/dear-mr-harlon-rivers/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1020738/winter-whispers/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1913140/in-the-river-of-good-company/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1855694/the-slow-death-of-a-poet/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1995383/traces-of-youa-fathers-tribute/

2014
Harlon Rivers:
http://hellopoetry.com/-harlon-rivers/
my personal call sign, Poseidon
Poseidon was very fitting with Harlon River,
due to the symbolic nature of the water in their names.
I have only read few of this gentleman's work,
But I can assure you his work is very much a gift to the audience,
And like Poseidon that gift is fire to humanity.
Dawn of  Lighten

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1833151/a-walk-with-tonya-maria/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1924604/ode-to-a-brimful-poetwith-a-twist/
and of course<
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1954256/drinkin-mr-coffee-and-cheap-*****/
Where Shelter Jul 2017
raise ourselves, rouse ourselves, rising to race up versus the sun,
to ferry dock, to catch the first, the 5:10am to the mainland,
which is just an island-too-but-longer,
on the first boat of the workweek, the first leg
of an island to island to island journey-poem, but that
for another morning, unless already writ, but forgot?

the north fork, an herb garden of vegetables and fruits,
family farms & rural suburbs, towns of English & Indian names,
all cheek to jowl, corn rows, tractor museums,
high school football victory banners of a prior year,  
and alas, always fresh, aged-woe reminders,
too many streets, ferries, bridges named for young boys who didn't return from foreign wars and whom we all knew by right sight

me, a summer sojourner, a summer visa, an off-islander,
a Hebrew, living among the native island born hareleggers,^
the Methodists, Quakers, and the rest of a varietal potpourri of "Egyptians," come here by choice, all, living in a paradisal
farmers market, all faiths enjoying seven times seven
years of plenty

Country Road (CR) 48, plainly named, snakes it way to the city,  
a  hundred miles, a hundred miles, as the song says,
to a distant, invisible emerald mecca,
which magically emanates
waves of gravitational pull powerful,
where I heard that human city folk go to do derring do,
battling with numbers, creativity and keenest human instincts,
game playing for a throne that may not even exist

as we go west, the sun sneaks up behind us
spotted in the steve sideview mirror, watching our
winking red tails,
moving away, asking us why, are we somehow dissatisfied,
with the rich purple soil of this little refuge it protects?

this soil, blessed, brings forth the babies of summer,
truly a fruited plain cornucopia, the famed potatoes,
fresh eggs, for sale by unseen and oft unattended hands,
plant it and it will come, the peonies flowers, the sod, tomatoes,
the Christmas trees, local duck and fresh caught striped bass,,
over flowing fruit stands endless,
where they debate no politics but only
which fruit will become tomorrow's pies?

and always, first and foremost, the vineyards, the vineyards

not yet six am, sun still too weak, to do the ***** work burn,
fields full of snow white mist lying over man tall vines,
the mist, ground swelling up to the chest level, then north
to the nostrils and head, intoxicating the lungs, the brain,
inculcating the chest with a salve of moisture,
a blend of sea and farm fresh air,
containing the designer's secret arts of earth creation

the fine mist so thick, no different than a snowy white out,
leaves me marveling and a-wonder, why do I leave,
dictated to by boxes on a hardware store calendar?

why not bide and hide in the morn mist,
never will-would we-be found, the vineyards and corn rows,
my protectors, the bay and sound, my natural moats,
is the music of wind + leaves, symphonic insufficient,
isn't the theater of the birds, wild turkeys, families of deer, osprey,
tern, visiting Canadian geese, and the hard to spot, Broadway stars,
those little foxes, wondrous enough?

this guising vineyard mist offers solutions to questions
I should not be asking, especially, primarily,
where is shelter,

for that is asked and answered
July 2017
for the island and the fork folk

http://definithing.com/harelegger/
  Jul 2017 Where Shelter
betterdays
i wait standing at the old metal gate
my soul is tired, it has been a long Monday
then i see you run toward me
that action alone makes
my heart bloosom like
a sunflower,
all bright seeds, turning
toward you,  the sunshine
of my world
My pick up at school today,
he still runs to me
excited to share his day
no matter what mine has been
that action makes my heary burst
for I well know, those days are numbered
  Jul 2017 Where Shelter
ogdiddynash
<•>

the unexpected pleasure of a peach

zenith moist, ripened to the exact state
when peaking is a squealing of bite size wet living pleasures,
and all is conquered,
and of course,
you're filled with loss
at the absence of perfection
in important things,
now with despair destructed,
new fear infecting fears
so many forces intersecting,
and one simply wishes to surrender
and then the peach texts the brain

*no way
you may have peaked,
but tomorrow and fore-next,
you'll pick another like me,
and plant my pit beneath
your picture window
and must perforce
live another day
in the shadow of my hope,
the scent of my existence
for the teachers
Where Shelter Jul 2017
alas, the same promise,
yet again, broken, no more writing of
the lightness of perfection so real,
it cannot be a truly,
a man's one more poetic homage to improve upon nature's gift,
nary a single craft to be seen,
tho somewhere, a motor hums nearby,
a mechanical reminder that men
will intrude, even if unobserved,
not necessarily then,
a picture complete

the sun 7 o'clock afternoon sky low,
warmths the world, as did its AM reciprocal,
a dozen hours earlier,
both on a low heat,
a sky stove top
'keep warm' setting,
a desirable global warming temperature

that promise not to burden you
with a hundredth scribing of his
lottery luck, this poetry nook and the
idyll of its surround,
it's childlike insistence,
stomping on the greenest sea grass
of this portly world,
"write of me, attention must be paid!"

the lightest breeze of excellent sufficiency
asks the trees to shake
their compatriot leaves
as if to applaud,
one more time, a lord of the ring serenade,
an evenstar song of
the solstice of perfection

a cloudless night but for
an occasional wispy white blemish,
hinting that the orb's final bow will be
a forever remembered,
standing ovation performance

in an hour, to the dock we'll go,
joining  the congregant gulls
in appreciating the edging lower of
an immaculate inception
of a dying day's deceptive departure

my troubles, those that
furrow and till the brow,
105 miles away, as the crow flies,
for now suppressed into non-existence,
as we drink to
la vie en rose,
our wine, snatching the salmon pink
of suns rays rippling and reflecting
upon humans, who too reflect,
upon their good fortune,
this single and singular
peeking at the peaking of their perfection,
each wishing this be
their journeys end, their final solstice,
to walk into a funnel upon the water,
into the sun and the
horizon in attendance faithful,,
alighting upon the wings of the most glorious of  inviting, dying rays of setting,
answering the question, a long last finale,
here, here is shelter!
a  sincere apology for writing of, again and again, the perfection of this place in our lives

Silver Beach, Peconic Bay, S. I
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