"hillsides" poems
choreography
is taking off
in rural areas
cows are moving
and grooving
fabulously
on hillsides
and in creek paddocks
you can see cows
shaking
their four legged frames
WOW
WOW
WOW
those cows can dance
their hypnotic steps
put one in a trance
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 9:10 PM UTC
He would’ve explained how it was still raining,
near dusk one evening, the sky a bright shimmering pink.
The fog made things seem hollow and unattached,
his life was still a constellation of possibilities.
You could let your hair grow, he said.
Some things you can feel.
He would’ve explained how it was still raining,
leaning forward, head down,
wading across the field to the river
and then turning and wading back.
He would’ve explained how it was still raining
as the sky went from pink to purple,
across that dotted line between two different worlds,
a place where your life exists before you’ve lived it.
The vapors **** you in.
He would’ve explained how it was still raining;
he should’ve taken one look and headed for higher ground.
The rain was the war and you had to fight it,
no time for sorting through options, no thinking at all.
He remembered trying to crawl towards the screaming,
and the bright pink sky, and the war, and courage.
You come over clean and you get *****
He was part of the waste.
Outside, a soft violet light was spreading out across the eastern hillsides.
Mar 9, 2012
Mar 9, 2012 at 5:45 PM UTC
There is a forest old as hillsides
tall, majestic, dappled shades
fall on ground beneath the silent
gnarled defenders of the glade.
There they stand in ancient splendour
many souls have passed their way
often used as welcome shelter
from the heat of summers day.
Sweet the air they breathe in chorus
our life's breath their lungs provide,
soaking up our daily poison
so that we may live and thrive.
You seas of men intent to clear them
citing progress, peddling greed
tearing roots from precious mooring
laying waste to nature's seed.
**** the beauty of a landscape
displace creatures for your need
rupture fragile ecosystems
scar the earth and watch it bleed.
To you I ask a simple question,
as I see the land bereaved.
What need has man of all this progress
when he can no longer breathe?
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 3:17 PM UTC
50
I haven’t told my garden yet—
Lest that should conquer me.
I haven’t quite the strength now
To break it to the Bee—
I will not name it in the street
For shops would stare at me—
That one so shy—so ignorant
Should have the face to die.
The hillsides must not know it—
Where I have rambled so—
Nor tell the loving forests
The day that I shall go—
Nor lisp it at the table—
Nor heedless by the way
Hint that within the Riddle
One will walk today—
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america, americultus, americate, dubiously **********
::: our gold-flecked bodies.
blackbirdian danceparty, i'll go.
washed-up beach bottles and all our feet amongst them curling time.
teens dream in orchid; they wait for stars and dark and los hombres of good dust.
they wait on eyes, and on embers, on belly belly.
jellyfish flashlight shrine.
we eat acid and strawberries and butter in the cemetery,
and feed foxes lizards face first :::
us lost ghouls on school-nights.
flash tag jazz, and yellow bicycles.
::: that hot eternal light.
that candy colored smoke don't smoke; go south on her body.
then thoughts form thoughts form action, form twangs all tuned to air.
& we, as notes, we notes harp like light
to dust.
our glistering hormonal thrusts beneath sheath of liquid love. her eyes,
with those multi-speckled strands
infinitesimally drunk :::
seed from my ****
pearled halo: smoke above my head.
::: waves and machines and weekends. filtered by the long ****
of existence.
boys wait in rooms of hotels for more drugs, and the girls bringing them.
like caterpillars on silky thin treadways,
with nothing but the flavor of our passions to ignite the way. we
exacerbate the boundaries of our intentions. we
curl under sheets, bending sheets of light and sound. we
flakey emaciated flakes. [sequence suffered time in motion] we
dirt. it’s what we are; dirt.
we are druggernauts, tasting ourselves along the iridescent brim.
::: we crawl up cross-glowing hillsides toward portals and faraway
bleep-blorps of hot god-head calibration.
we sticky-crackle go burn. [nature puzzles]
the brain shifts back; twenty-one grams they say the soul weighs.
they say things.
cherry blossom tree tips in the dark.
tele-portal surfing with an intergalactic pizza priest, and his satchel of secret sauce.
he heaves in the corner; rebirth :::
tendrils pulled tight, everybody **** chung…
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
Impressionist colors rising out of chocolate brown,
stretching chartreuse necks upwards.
Intertwining vines clutching each other in a desperate rhapsody of life,
all waiting to display their Creators’ palette of pure color.
Orchid and yellow chalices hold the morning dew
as all are christened in jeweled morning light.
With blue and white snow you carpet the ground
blanketing hillsides with hope of Monet.
Orange tongues of fire licking up towards the sun
while jade blades battle as new growth crowds in.
Blossoms hang full with a living harvest of yellow,
awaiting transport to another.
Stalks of dried grasses stirred by the August wind,
dancing to the rhythm of the warm stirring breeze.
Summer now ebbing away in aged colors muted with brown,
returning to the muddied ground once again.
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 11:29 PM UTC
at first an unrelenting green covers everything:
the trees, the lawn, the hillsides, the marshes, the windbreaks,
everything is completely and totally green, the deepest, truest green,
so green you might even forget that it wasn't always green,
so green you might not stop to think that it won't always be green.
school children look out windows during their exams,
longing to be free amid all that greenness,
lovers sit in parks near the water, under perfectly green leaves,
listening to the wind, watching the stars come out
and making their wishes, forever joined with that unrelenting green.
artists dip their impressionistic brushes in the green and dab on canvas
pictures of people gathered at picnics in dappled, green shade,
joined with the greenness, enveloped and absorbed by it,
becoming green themselves. they paint pictures of leafy trees reaching beyond the canvas with patches of sky showing through, a perspective of endless summer that you have to look at a long time
to see and feel, but once you find it beyond the greenness, in the
blue beyond the hill, you will be part of it always: through the fading mid-summer and pale, yellowing late summer, even into the multi-
colored fall and the stark, grey-white winter, and you will know life, and hope and love, and nothing will ever seem the same again
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 7:05 AM UTC
I want to climb the hillsides
And to see each wondrous view,
And find the peace I long for there
It's all I wish to do,
I want to walk down winding lanes
And to see the lands of green,
And to smell the pretty flowers there
And breathe the air so clean.
I just want to change my world
I need a brand new start,
And leave the strife of city life
A country boy at heart.
I want to cross the meadows
And to see the woodlands grow,
I want to find serenity
Wherever I do go,
I long to see the rivers
And the gently flowing streams,
Which sparkle in the sunlight there
Within a place of dreams.
I just want to change my world
I need a brand new start,
And leave the strife of city life
A country boy at heart.
I want to see the wheat that blows
Within the fields of gold,
I want to find the freedom
And the treasures there untold,
I want to hear the birdsongs
In early morning skies,
And to witness every sunset
And to watch each dawning rise.
I just want to change my world
I need a brand new start,
And leave the strife of city life
A country boy at heart.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 1:22 PM UTC
The casket was coming up, swaying and wobbling
Like a novice skater’s layover spin,
The workings proceeding apace,
The stillness of the August heat
Punctuated by disinterested growl of the backhoe,
The occasional out-of-place jocularity by the excavators
The creaky jingle of the chains holding the muddied box
As it proceeded skyward in its clumsy poor-man’s Resurrection.
The affair was being observed by an elderly couple,
Old enough to be of no particular age.
Their car had Carolina plates,
But their inflections, their casually-tossed idioms
They noted that ruefully The grass needs mowed)
Marked them as natives.
They’d returned (Last time, most likely,
The wife uttered mournfully)
To take their son with them; he’d drowned when was five? six?
(The years will do that to a body, apparently)
In Kinzua Creek some half-century ago,
Back when little boys weren’t under a mandate
To be safe from themselves, as it were.
He was our boy! We’ve never forgotten him!
The old man said, the words snapping off
In a manner that spoke of something else altogether,
How the whistle at the Montmorenci
Went off at three and eleven for second shift,
And your *** had better be there,
As those were good jobs that didn’t wait for bereavement leave,
Because there was always someone
Just itching to take your spot on the line,
And anyway life went on,
At least in the sense that television screens went all to snow
And tires went flat and fuses blew
And eventually a dead child
Is not always in the forefront of your thoughts,
Only tiptoeing in when the Press ran a picture
Of the Montmorenci Area Class of whenever,
Or there was an item about some other family
Who opened their front door
To a grim sheriff’s deputy with his hat in his hand.
Eventually, after some time
And in defiance of both the odds and gravity,
The casket was settled into the back
Of the undertaker’s huge old black Caddy,
And the couple cane-toddled back to their car,
Following out the through the old spider-like gates
And onto the main road.
The brief procession fading from sight,
Until there was nothing left to see
Save the hillsides covered in old growth pine.
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
Whisky, “The Water of Life”,
******** burning all down my chest.
Opening up my mind to endless imaginations
So I can put the world to rights
Like Superman in his pomp.
Feel that glow,
Spreading like a forest fire.
Feelgood Factor
Fathomless in its depth.
Who cares what peat, in what glens
Or valleys it came from.
Or what precipitation
Bathed those golden barley ears
On Celtic hillsides.
I’ll drink any Whisky,
Single or blend
White oak cask or not.
So long as it gives me that buzz
And blows my mind.
Inspiring the best
Or worst
In me.
Paul Butters
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
Maybe it's just because the color of these hillsides
is a shade or two darker than the sky,
but I am unwittingly content with these fiddle strings,
nodding on the porch, under Christmas lights
on a rainy July evening, peppered with the scent
of apple cake and something smoky
while our bare feet are stomping to my grandfather's lullaby--
a familiar melody that I've never really known,
plucked and bowed, more sentient that I'll ever be.
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 5:51 PM UTC
At Vernal equinox, the Sun crosses
over the plane of the Earth’s equator
and equalises the night and the day.
Then will the Emerald Dragon awaken
from his hibernation beneath the earth.
Rising in the jade forests of Ghizhou,
this yin creature transforms the cold, dead land.
Primal and powerful, he gathers the Qi;
melts the mountain snows to ribbons of fire
igniting the frosty hillsides to growth,
fuses each thing with verdant energy,
revives again the seed, renews the bulb,
sprouting tender shoots juice-rich and sap-full
Shy blossoms set to bloom and burst with fruit
Fresh scented breezes ruffle foliage
maiden ferns shiver with their thrill and ******
Grasses and reeds bedewed and beryline,
murmuring and humming low and dulcet,
dancing and swaying at the river’s edge.
Roots of every tree draw deep from the earth
Magnolia and Frangipani breathe
and pant out fragrant honeyed lusciousness
Spring sparks and quickens, kicks and is alive.
© M.L.Emmett
Aug 16, 2016
Aug 16, 2016 at 5:38 AM UTC
Lazy sundays with the sad glow
there’s nothing to be sad about
except that it is all over
of course, my one day off vanished
outside blowing meager paychecks
emerald hillsides topped with leaves
abutting, climbing the city
plunged into histories soon gone
like the cold, gold sun gleaming off
the ribbon of the tarmacked road
we returned to from our escape
peering back through the car’s windshields
Oct 15, 2018
Oct 15, 2018 at 1:15 AM UTC
Long Valley lay outside my bedroom window
high desert Northern Nevada,
each sunrise
rose
brilliant red
spirals
spires
exploding
in the passing dawn,
to
the petroglyphs
we were drawn.
The asphalt became a dirt road
then the dirt road ended.
Along Long Valley
like some drive through zoo,
herds of wild burros
cattle
sheep
grazing
separated by Pinion pines
the white sage
the dust devils
and the tumble weeds
and a 52 Studebaker body
perfectly preserved
in the high desert dry air
one could only wonder how it got there.
Long Valley had its own expanse
its own vibration to the air
distinct and unique
filled with wonder
way out there.
The petroglyphs
10,000 year old drawings
at once was
the shores of ancient
Lake Lahontan
you could feel it there.
Trying to decipher
the lines and curly cues
circles and swirls
stars and shapes
of
an alien consciousness
from another land
another time.
This was no one rock
but
acres and acres
of generations
communicating with one another
the rocks worn away
from thousands of years of sitting
forming perfect lounge chairs,
perhaps sitting alongside
some receding shore line.
There were stone rock walls carefully stacked
mysteriously standing scattered
in the desert
no one knows what it really means.
While lost in the tones
the scents and vision
of the millennium,
on the hillside
through the Tamarack
and Pinion
there emerged
four wild mustangs
at a distance
on the top of the ridge
not those that wandered
into our Virgina City yards
But wild animals
tied to the horses of the millennium.
Power and Strength
spirit gods
reminding us of where we were.
The winds blew
the black mane
of the male in front
wet from sweat
chest heaving in breath
and then they were gone
over the hill
from where they had come.
The petroglyphs were silent.
The sounds of the winds
the sounds of the small stream
less than a drop
in the once Great Lahontan Sea.
Before the sun went down
we needed to leave
driving along the sides
of dry river beds
up rocky hillsides
along the electrical lines
to the dirt road
to the asphalt
as the Long Valley
sunset shot
spires of red.
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 10:26 AM UTC
Somewhere deep in the skies of Montana
a lonely street corner flickers
casting coded light
upon the distant albino hillside
It was once a great lake
of snow and ice and melt and
unseen by life
It drained and died
and its beautiful lakebed sands
became the hillside
again
to tumble and fall
into valley and time
again
there we built an impermanent road
we pave and pave
maintain
with trucks and slabs of dirt and grain
roaming those Roman roads
again
Somewhere deep in that heartland
the strings that pumped the musculature
of a dying nation
slowly giving way to a violent attack
from within
oxidize and pool
into great tides
to one day see the coast
I am in California
but I see it clearly as a dream
where the great plains meet the mountain face
and the Cheyenne carved their heels into the dirt
for a bit
spirit
eroded into the winds
today the miners spit
at a coffee-town bar
into copper cans
licker than split
Owning the land that shakes
and shifts
redrawing god's lines
with a paper pad and a pen
for a bit
And the dresses the ladies wear shine
lacquered wood and the horses cry
and beside the interstate
the trucks steam and chuff
and their drivers gaze starry-eyed
onward, beyond into the night
beyond those flanking hillsides
to the flat ocean land sponged anew
that left the oil fields in Texas and the tar sands in
Athabasca
set ablaze in the fervor
of a death rattle
American heart
pumping to feed these hillsides
again
for tomorrow we begin.
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 2:18 PM UTC
*Stellar spirit, fearless flier to high skies, your wings are gifts of freedom,
your florid songs, tug at my heart as much as those plumage,
your elan, though subdued a bit by harsh weather, takes new shoots,
never in disquiet, indomitable, your inner lamp, now burns with camphor light.
I see you fly above the storm clouds, singing anthem of your soul,
spectacular, in clear weather, cheered by your dear ones near,
the hillsides, valleys and dales resound with your dulcet tunes.*
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town
The hill tops creep away like children playing games
our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games
after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill
later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.
Pennyanne Windsor, from Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 4:27 AM UTC
.
The mountain lily crowding,
Grassy glens in formal dress,
After snows and early spring—
Rain over all the green hillsides,
An earthly heaven of constellation,
Daybreaks into marvelous milkyway.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 4:24 PM UTC
beluga whales surfaced, floating ghostly white
ferocious tides ripped, sands sinking
cowslip tripped the cloud's crashing sky
sunbursts cracked storm walls, with fire yellow light
rain far-off sheeted, poured - hillsides weeping
fireweed bowed, bent heavily sleeping
the rutted road curved swerving narrowly upward
leading me to the sweet summer of Girdwood
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 9:35 PM UTC
We set out to honor Mary
traveling the pilgrim's path from west to east
We walked, we rode the bus
entertained and enchanted by Cristina
applauding Ramon along the way.
Each day was one of prayer and song, sunshine and fellowship
rosaries and novena
we submitted petitions to Santiago
we laughed with San Serapio
From the grand and magnificent cathedrals
to the humblest village chapel
we grew in faith, hearing God's word in many languages.
We marveled at the dedication and stamina of the pilgrims
making their way on foot and bicycle
at the warmth, generosity, and hospitality
they receive along the way
We picknicked alongside mountain streams
enjoying good food, good wine,and good friendship
we walked down the hillsides in the hot sunshine
passing the pilgrims going the opposite way
we quenched our thirst in a quaint and rustic village tavern.
Ramon drove with skill up the mountains to Garabandal
a remote village suspended in time and beauty
there on the mountain top we sat among the pines
where Mary had appeared.
We sat in silence, in awe and reverence
the only sounds, the whisper of the breeze and the cowbells on the hillside
We prayed the rosary
It was, for most of us, a most special memory
From our bus we looked out at the mountains
the green and rolling farmland
at the rocky Atlantic coast
at the rios and the rias.
We walked in procession at Fatima and Lourdes
by candlelight and moonlight
and again in the brilliant sunshine
The voices and the church bells
carried across the plazas
enveloping us in joy and prayer and mysticism
It was at the grotto at Lourdes
with my hands pressed on the rocky cave wall
with the holy water on my hands
that I felt Mary's presence
Mary, my mother, my sister, my friend
AVE MARIA
September, 2008
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 8:52 PM UTC
Tucked away in our subconsciousness is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are travelling by train. Out the windows, we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving on a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and village halls.
But the uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour, we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we reach there, so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will be fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes loitering, waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.
"When we reach the station, that will be it", we cry. "When I'm 18", "When I buy a new 450SL Mercedes Benz", "When I put my last kid through collage", "When I have paid off the mortgage", "When I get a promotion", "When I reach the age of the retirement, I shall live happily ever after."
Sooner or later, we must realize that there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.
"Relish the moment" is a good motto, especially when coupled withe the Psalm 118:24:"This is the day which the Lord hath made, we will rejoice and be glad in it." It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tommorrow. Reget and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more icecreams, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more and cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. Then the station will come soon enough.
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
~
I recall seeing golden fields
basking beneath sunset wishes
and dragonfly dances
on a canvas of nature’s own hand
painted in fantasy brush strokes
tree lines waving at blue skies as
autumn leaves created a vibrant landscape
like so many colorful kites
floating aimlessly on a cool breeze
sifting through pumpkin patch mazes
chilly days inviting snowflake flurries
from alabaster hydrangea clouds
silently sailing above pine cone hillsides
welcoming evergreen aromas
and fireside smoke streams reaching
today as I gaze through moistened eyes
blurred moments hover like heavy drape cloaks
coating my visions in broken heart darkness
and I realize, without you
I now see nothing…at all
Nov 3, 2014
Nov 3, 2014 at 9:15 AM UTC
Among the blight-killed eucalypts, among
trees and bushes rusted by Christmas frosts,
the yards and hillsides exhausted by five years of drought,
certain airy white blossoms punctually
reappeared, and dense clusters of pale pink, dark pink--
a delicate abundance. They seemed
like guests arriving joyfully on the accustomed
festival day, unaware of the year's events, not perceiving
the sackcloth others were wearing.
To some of us, the dejected landscape consorted well
with our shame and bitterness. Skies ever-blue,
daily sunshine, disgusted us like smile-buttons.
Yet the blossoms, clinging to thin branches
more lightly than birds alert for flight,
lifted the sunken heart
even against its will.
But not
as symbols of hope: they were flimsy
as our resistance to the crimes committed
--again, again--in our name; and yes, they return,
year after year, and yes, they briefly shone with serene joy
over against the dark glare
of evil days. They are, and their presence
is quietness ineffable--and the bombings are, were,
no doubt will be; that quiet, that huge cacophany
simultaneous. No promise was being accorded, the blossoms
were not doves, there was no rainbow. And when it was claimed
the war had ended, it had not ended.
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