"knolls" poems
White-furred hill flowers bow
Gust-bent,
Wet in April snow,
Lavender beneath their
Downy coats.
Tender soldiers of spring
Grasp wind-blown gravel steeps,
Stand to beckon brown grass,
Soft-call the life in sapless trees
To ring with green again
Against Old Bully Winter’s
Blustering.
Quaking aspens,
Earliest to leaf in yellow-green,
Curling grama grasses,
Tough food for buffalo,
Cannot boast first life each Montana spring;
Only zombie-lichens,
Rock-fast mosses
Throw off winter’s death
Before the crocus' rise.
On eastern Montana hills
No street-hemmed dandelions
Colonize in chute-dropped ranks;
No time-tamed tulips
Live on wind-round knolls.
Here, the yucca’s bayonet-sharp ******
Here, the wild onions’ scent-strong hold;
But these arrive after early chill,
Following the purple crocus on the hill.
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 8:36 AM UTC
We, the same from and of flesh and pumping blood,
our skin sweating in touch, together, the scent
was always the same,
you and I, one younger, one older,
the way it was meant to be,
in fights and tears and pup-tent shared lamp-lit fears,
we rolled our heads beneath the stars above
upon the grassy knolls, our pillows kept,
not ever knowing that one of us would be
covered beneath the soily breath,
the one of one of us, still left,
watering the fields of your footsteps,
now dressed up as dreamy memories,
the tossing heart of guilt and pleads,
for just one more day, ****** -one more
day...
I had still some things,
I wanted to say.
____
My schoolmate Tim and I both lost out brother Mikeys.
This poem is for them.
Jan 1, 2011
Jan 1, 2011 at 5:06 AM UTC
Hold my hand
And lead me through
Traverse this land
Together we two.
Over unknown terrains
Under weeping skies
Through unforgiving plains
Through pain and lies.
Between grieving mountains
And screaming valleys
Feeding fevered delusions
Fraught with delays and tarries.
Beyond the hills and knolls
Hopeful of salvation
Surviving pits and falls
Not knowing the destination.
My hand still in yours
An arduous odyssey
Must stay the course
Must complete this journey.
Bright skies up ahead
Or so they promise
Soon shall pass they said
Soon will come release.
Still in this; still walking
Not soon expecting the end
Still in this; still trudging
Round this obscured treacherous bend.
Doubtful mad endeavour
I dragged you with me
When this finally is over
We'll look back and see.
Glad that we were together
Glad that together we came
Never cease from being near
Keep holding my hand, just the same.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 8:28 AM UTC
The living reality of a metaphor, almost every ounce in-taken,
Every nuance, every pronounce, measured, weighted and weighty,
Fluid or firmament, each encapsulated, prior to release, scaled,
Tabulated, ordered, noted, recorded, and ultimately judg-ed.
Totality of it all, the varied quantities of the ingested nutrients,
even the forecast of the future, if every day was a metaphor for
like today…
DO
I speak of the day's headlines?
Of the quantity and nutrition that passes through my lips?
Or
The surround sound of the surrounding sounds of this day,
the flocks of bandito geese who exist only to torment,
the landscape working crews, with their tools, like a 7::00an wake up buzzing about, for the entire street, going house to house, looking for itinerant grassy knolls of patches of bright green,
overnight sprung up and needy to be
guillotined,
laundry to do, rugs needy for clothesline screaming/beating or merely super fast vacuuming;
they, hawking their skills available for the old and infirm,
or the fatty catty cattle lazy, (somewhere in there is moi);
and the decibels of their machines, the rat-a-tat of their rapido, voluble speech that feeds me poetry by the ounce of their laughter, but more exactly of,
What do I speak, to what do I allude?
Why all and none, everything and specifically nothing,
for the metaphor is meta! (1)
It is life itself, from the quarter teaspoon
to the overflowing bath, it is life at its most incremental,
the moment
of flushing face,
the second
of ah ha! recollection, the,
long term trends
trending,
the flatline of my EKG,
the weighty pronouncement of my talking scale (you've been bad),
IT IS THE EVERYTHING
that is measurable, weighable, isolatable, defined;
it is our existence of our each & every of action and inaction strung together like a necklace and a chain
We are metaphor, reality, is, the script,
which is the product of you.
scriptwriter…/
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM UTC
*for T.M.R.
our "fellow" southern friend*
the southern way,
she-poet
teaches me
via long distance
breaking of the
braking neural inhibitions of
the loudest silences
that only humans can
mistress
photos, stories,
Facebook posts
how the earth rebirths
taking unasked
unwitting but wisely
both of us
to be refreshed,
so verily
the southern way
sharing worldly
southern words
betraying a
more than
passing
(how I hate that word)
expertise
in spring colors
glorious to every sense,
best described
as nature's way to humanize what we wordily call
hopeful,
self-betraying herself by the
she -poets
innate
southern ways
calls me
northern boy
in a
true voice,
raconteuring,
quick retorting
always in the midst of
d r a wling stories,
about all crazy frogs
of Columbia County,
jumping multiple courses
all about
she-poets navigating
life erratic,
half ecstatic
yet singularity colored,
characteristic of a
ninety percent southern
Tennessee whiskey blues
hear clear
she-poets
welcoming swirling
undertow undertones
lying just above the calmest
morning water surface glistening
words betraying nothing,
yet saying
all in
between, in
pauses of
speckling sun drops spectacular
she-poet
has her places
in woods, knolls and
rarely visited mountains
where cold brooks and cold beers
southern sooth
in ways
I will likely,
wanting but unable,
never learn
to hear clear
the southern way
is never flex,
nerve never
never bend, smile,
still fighting
the prior lost cause
ignore the
cracks coverup
until and when
the afternoon sun
ceases to warm
the orchard porch
daylighting no longer
when no one is around
she-poet
weeps out loud alone
in the
southern way
and I,
northern boy,
student witness,
having obtained
a learner's permit
for her teachings
re
the southern wayfaring ways
of living life
weep along side
in my unsatisfactory
northern way,
learning that,
who knew,
tears are also
glue
anywhere
Apr 12, 2015
Apr 12, 2015 at 8:08 AM UTC
Between autumn's offerings
And spring's wings,
Our winter lights are everything.
Crisp sky nights string tinsel streams,
And crystal air heils winter's dreams.
Poplar trees that snowed in summer
Are treasures held in winter's slumber.
Bare branches reach in silhouette
For crowning stars where none now sit.
Here dreams of flight and fancy thrill
Shimmering eyes on a gift-wrapped hill.
Shorelines once rubbed with reeds,
Are splashed by our moonlight beads.
Knolls wrapped in wreaths of herring bone,
Like sirens call us from our home.
Stars held in place by poplar fingers
Ring our ponds like carolling singers.
There nestled by framed winter scenes,
Our winter lights glitter red and green.
These lights that through our window stream,
Bring to mind warm Christmas dreams
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 1:46 PM UTC
There's nothing can be done but wait—
till promise looms—
while April's passions blithely bloom
Brighter the days, though bitterly cold
The view is a carpet of flowery knolls
Studded with poppies and daisies of white
Flowers aglow in the loitering light—
Oh could I tarry, and oh could I stay
Oh could I pair with this blossoming glade
Could I linger and lie under stretches of sky
I would linger and lie for an age
Sep 16, 2025
Sep 16, 2025 at 4:38 PM UTC
(I)
People used to light candles to ward off
prophesies such as this. Stopping, each
motherly representative, for 75 seconds
or less,
to tip match-spark to wax-thread
and hope for the best.
What ceremonial significance now
do we seek for to slow the approach
of what we know is waiting?
Oncoming march of death-knolls and unhappiness
bound up in silence
where
once we laughed uncensored at and for
the characters who spun throughout
this town, that school, the city, our lives.
All being, understandably, becomes
efficiently replaced with obvious simplicity.
From effortless performances
of what made our lives important
back in childhood years when living
was stable and guaranteed,
now to this mongrel era of constant migration
beckoning....
The familiar is no longer our youth’s
careless summer holidays.
The Familiar is now a land where
people don’t bother with any ideas
of an ideal existence beyond
what lottery tickets may bring.
Those who inhabit here are
more alerted to the purpose of lighting
coals in winter to shelter the children
and to keep the windows from cracking.
In summer find these same awaiting with
patient ears to heed any advice
which keeps them from going completely insane.
(II)
Go now, away
,begin
your quest, foolish schoolboy.
An entire adolescence’s
comeuppance is due.
Time now to seek recompense
for the years you waited
for anything significant to happen.
Time to seek girls with inviting eyes
and lilting vowels to offer favors to.
Abled with a catalogue of charmed
intoxicants. All softened by
a plentitude of weekdays waking
at three in the afternoon.
(Does “afternoon” exist in layman’s terms? Does
he simply made do with morning, day and night?)
Then on your flight make haste
to ensure your visit merely brief.
Like only one dimension of
your day-persona be a hawk
that delivers messages
back to the ivory towers of
new central HQ, while remaining
all cloak and whisper.
Messages from where people live
but no longer speak,
as result of an assigned sense
of failure,or complimentary
wrongdoings sought, what sorrow achieves.
Shattered lives, Ending dreams.
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 11:55 AM UTC
Knolls of potatoes glow like gold
spreading the shine of good harvest
fading in the dark of her eyes.
The bounty is a curse on her purse
for as long as she recalls
market grows slow
prices rule low
abundance eats away the toil.
Yet so long her breathes willed
she would come back to the field
feeding herself away
to the soil.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 4:24 AM UTC
it is now an anniversary in some places
some anonymous faces
are celebrating the birth of a son
a wedding that happened
some hapless eve in yesteryear
and we have our anniversary,
the one we call
9/11
thousands have penned poems about that day
usually struggling with what they had to say
I know I did
not because I was choking back tears
or harbored any fears
that more planes would crash into innocent green knolls
or ram New York’s majestic glass towers
but because of the…flowers…the flowers
cut and placed on hallowed ground
gently laid without a sound
the flowers
the flowers always pay a price
for an earthly sacrifice
placed at altars made high
and on empty caskets passing by
they neither whimper nor whine
and say not a wilting word waiting
for the anguished congregating
of those who need to find meaning
in the limits of fleeting flesh
the flowers have
long ago accepted their finite fate
but sadly it is often too late
for those who stand and weep
to somehow embrace the silent sleep
that will come to all
on anniversaries yet to be dated
and billions of others to be created
who will proudly build new towers
and need to cut sad wise flowers
Sep 10, 2012
Sep 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM UTC
The night had brought with it the hush of a thousand homes, nestled in the raw
slumber of soft shadows -
moon cast, in white mist and deep groves of impenetrable asymmetries...
a plume of thoughtful blobs in the shape of trees and dozy chimneys,
crowding the dark knolls
of some beautiful assembly -
An unbearable Elysium, foam-joy and regal
stammering
the eye of our stillness ...
A luminous rush of glories and old plots of dead heavens
shimmering in the dialect
of mute jewels.
The Deep Night, plush and removed; swollen with the dizzy laws that govern such astonishing things -
An unmasked pavilion, stripped of horrors, laying naked in the ether
bejeweled in the common genius of the supreme will...
the extraordinary -
blasting the mundane from it's faint heart into ingots of exuberant ore ~
O'Sacred things that devour flame
to disgorge supernova As tapestry.....
A garden of stars most hostile
to the ignorance of our darker thoughts -
The deep night gathered in the hollow of rainbows restrained by the clouds
Of a desperate mirror
One that reflects; to love better the Sun ~
but hasn't the Silver to shine.
Sep 8, 2012
Sep 8, 2012 at 6:03 PM UTC
ey yo if you think that 9/11 **** is crazy, take a closer look at jfk pushing those daisies, you could mistake this for the facts of life theme song, sticking its head up the rabbit hole and now you just seem gone, but if you grab on tight and then you pull it, up comes boundless theories of grassy knolls and magic bullets, wheres the love when a 10 year old can a spot a liar with his vision, swiftly points a fat finger at the entire warren commission, what happened we all forgot how to ask questions? lips tremble from a holstered police smith and wesson, never stopped to think if its just water their testing, scapegoats getting arrested, and then promptly murdered, just to take this trip a little further, leaving a **** taste in your mouth like ******* down an entire bag of werthers,
people laugh at 9/11 **** and downplay all the evidence,
but would you put it past a country that murdered their president,
for political gain, theyll put 4 shots through mine and your brain, keep us detained, for days, chuck us in guantamo bay, and then one day we're on a plane flying towards some towers, or wait no we're picking out flowers, bang flash, for my wife, shroedinger's life on the end of this knife, so stop you ***** just listen, this **** may seem sick and twisted, but please wait there is absolutely no reason we live in a police state, thats just what you've been told needs to be done, had consumerism forced down you, and you're told to have fun, and you say thank you and walk way, i'll take my stand another day. and yeah that farmer was an ******* i loved when he got overthrown by the pigs, but we'll wake up one morning and want bacon for breakfast ya dig?
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Nov 30, 2011
Nov 30, 2011 at 12:56 PM UTC
Apartment recommendations for a city I’ve never smelled
in my mailbox. Empty wine glasses and static electricity
the air, the dust, the heart, the tip, the flotilla----------------
mercy.
me.
mercenary. bible camp.
jacket, jacket, hobble; ****** keys.
You’re a smudge, you doornail, tack.
Tack-- tack, tack. Honey, a floating bungalow========)
Pull off the danger, rose, it’s a time for campaigning.
Awash in grassy knolls, you hidden scavenger.
Grassing, grassing with watering hide, you scrivener!
Jun 6, 2011
Jun 6, 2011 at 8:05 PM UTC
Gray is the season that withers
Blossoms dulled by satin frost
How they sadly fall
Cruel chill, it breaks them all
Rest, rest immortal doves
While winter feigns treasures lost
Crystal brooks still as dusk
Mirror figures warm at heart
Oaks over icy knolls
Sprawling old souls
Flutter, flutter leafless arches
For that single spark of life to start
Blushing through frozen woods
Morning hints at splendor, frail
A starling in the snow
Sleeping on her bough
Wake, wake feathered angel
Sing sweet trills of the nightingale
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 2:48 AM UTC
The night had brought with it the hush of a thousand homes, nestled in the raw
slumber of soft shadows -
moon cast, in white mist and deep groves of impenetrable asymmetries...
a plume of thoughtful blobs in the shape of trees and dozy chimneys,
crowding the dark knolls
of some beautiful assembly -
An unbearable Elysium, foam-joy and regal
stammering
the eye of our stillness ...
A luminous rush of glories and old plots of dead heavens
shimmering in the dialect
of mute jewels.
The Deep Night, plush and removed; swollen with the dizzy laws that govern such astonishing things -
An unmasked pavilion, stripped of horrors, laying naked in the ether
bejeweled in the common genius of the supreme will...
the extraordinary -
blasting the mundane from it's faint heart into ingots of exuberant ore ~
O'Sacred things that devour flame
to disgorge supernova As tapestry.....
A garden of stars most hostile
to the ignorance of our darker thoughts -
The deep night gathered in the hollow of rainbows restrained by the clouds
Of a desperate mirror
One that reflects; to love better the Sun ~
but hasn't the Silver to shine.
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 10:45 AM UTC
Caress my curves;
speak softly; your lips
touch mine with grace.
Trace the knolls and shallows of flesh.
Speak nothing more,
nothing less.
Feel my heart, as it beats with yours.
Once a lone soul,
awakened to yours.
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 5:17 AM UTC
Between autumn's offerings
And spring's wings,
Our winter lights are everything.
Crisp sky nights string tinsel streams,
And crystal air heils winter's dreams.
Poplar trees that snowed in summer
Are treasures held in winter's slumber.
Bare branches reach in silhouette
For crowning stars where none now sit.
Here dreams of flight and fancy thrill
Shimmering eyes on a gift-wrapped hill.
Shorelines once rubbed with reeds,
Are splashed by our moonlight beads.
Knolls wrapped in wreaths of herring bone,
Like sirens call us from our home.
Stars held in place by poplar fingers
Ring our ponds like carolling singers.
There nestled by framed winter scenes,
Our winter lights glitter red and green.
These lights that through our window stream,
Bring to mind warm Christmas dreams.
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
Between autumn's offerings
And spring's wings,
Our winter lights are everything.
Crisp sky nights string tinsel streams,
And crystal air heils winter's dreams.
Poplar trees that snowed in summer
Are treasures held in winter's slumber.
Bare branches reach in silhouette
For crowning stars where none now sit.
Here dreams of flight and fancy thrill
Shimmering eyes on a gift-wrapped hill.
Shorelines once rubbed with reeds,
Are splashed by our moonlight beads.
Knolls wrapped in wreaths of herring bone,
Like sirens call us from our home.
Stars held in place by poplar fingers
Ring our ponds like carolling singers.
There nestled by framed winter scenes,
Our winter lights glitter red and green.
These lights that through our window stream,
Bring to mind warm Christmas dreams
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 8:17 AM UTC
Start for the dart of the mart
Quarts of coolant guzzled down
A meal A break a heart that is no longer beating
Now the clouds are opened
And I see there was nothing there at all
Mind matters in the eyes prying for a cry
The little girl inside this one is no longer there
She has gone away to another place
I am sick I am tired I am a broken record atop a spinning player
Each hour that passes through this still place makes it seem as if nothing is real
As if the haze in mine eyes is the fog on a morning knolls break
Faster then any bullet we will die
Quicker then any hummingbird love will dissipate into a memory only captured
In torn and worn photographs
Kept by people that need something to talk about at dinner
At Christmas
At Thanksgiving
At times when the truth is so close
We all must shut it away
To go on is to prolong the fat fact that we winners are winding down a rocky
Rembrandt like
Painting of puke and bile and smiles which do not bring either happiness
Or heartbreak
Who is this person inside this mind that will not let me be?
Who put this brain inside of me?
Who allowed for these trials of touch and go to commence?
And who will be at the finish line when I am too exhausted to go on?
I am neither here nor there nor awake or asleep
I wander from the middle to the coast only to start wandering again
To be elevated from above the Earth
To be floating along
Is to see the world in the haze of which I speak which is Heaven
Where bugle playing baby angels sip on lemon cloud swirl drinks
Where death no longer lays its heavy hand upon any head
For He is there as well
We are all welcome to the corner market where behind door number two
Is a running river lined with no ***** pebbles
But broken fragments of dragon's gold
To take to this place is to lose your face for to drift one must pay
Yes
One must always pay
To play
Aug 4, 2011
Aug 4, 2011 at 3:43 PM UTC
The haze of a distant fire
flattens the light on the knolls
beyond the sageflats. Their half-tone
silhouettes jagged by tall pines.
The rumble of the engine as I stand beside the truck
with the door open, surveying the
horizon. Locusts crackling.
A patchwork of shadows washes
over the flats. Steel-gray clouds above.
The wind kicks up sparse columns of
dust. A lonely road
and a shot-up gate.
A glimmer in the dirt. Brass.
Nine millimiter. Discharged and forgotten.
The lock on the gate has been grazed by bullets.
Maybe this one.
The shadows wash over outcroppings
of lava rock amid the tall sage.
Nooks and crannies. Places to hide.
A gust of wind and I am standing in the shade
and my eyes relax as a prairie falcon
glides over the road to survey the
far side for something to eat,
close enough I can almost
hear the beating of his
wings and suddenly
zigs up and then
charges toward
the ground
and then
he has
gone.
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 1:31 AM UTC
*I know I've submitted to frailty.
I know I'm allowing where it takes me.*
I'm heading to places
where my skin best fit.
I'm dreaming of places
where my bones don't grind to grit.
*I know I've conceded to a state of mind.
I know I'm lost to a cause no one could find.*
I'm hiking up hills and knolls
angled steep.
I'm drifting through waters
that run too deep.
*I know I'm stuck to ideals - weathered and worn.
But I know I might be better...
in the morn.*
Jun 15, 2017
Jun 15, 2017 at 7:47 AM UTC
Oblivious to the rest of the world,
My mind devious as he brushed back a curl.
Black tips exploring,
Soft lips imploding,
As we let humid thoughts unfurl.
Fingers land just off the grass on sweet thorns,
To counterpart my luminous corns.
Like rain on sand,
Like a fish on land,
Feels unreal like stars in the early morns.
Tentacled creepers wind around the vulnerable tree,
After sweeping black cascades over valleys free
Spicy honeysuckles fall still,
As they shadow the hill,
And they move on to darken knolls as they agree.
Yawning caverns filled with awoken bats
Cause chaos and whispers through the cracks.
Like the first breaths of life,
When impatience is no vice,
Reticence falls away outside steel vats.
As the wind runs over the dunes,
As he plays and strums and croons
Fingers running through the grass,
Smoke melting on the glass,
While we lay underneath the half moon.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 2:29 PM UTC
Layin' in bed
Watching the sun slip behind the knolls of grass in the distance
If happy ever after still did exist
I'd still be holding you like this
Laying in bed
Seeing the stars rotate in the darkness
Still stuck in that time we called it love
But even the sun sets in paradise
Layin' in bed
Contemplating all that I gave to you
You stole my nights
And I let you...
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 10:50 PM UTC
Low beneath heavily barked, overhanging branches, leaning peacefully against the trunk of a lichen covered oak tree, crooked limbs and emerald leaves give shape to a lively canopy that shelter Love himself from misted rain. Here, amid grassy knolls, jeweled arabesques, and hallowed soil giving birth to flourishing verdure, the miracle of creation, in it's intricate balance, gives resonance to his voice which manifest itself in a faintly resounding lull that dances through his garden. If you listen closely, you can hear its solemn sigh, "Edennn".
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 2:25 AM UTC