"sandstone" poems
there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore
the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect
children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn
the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge
harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light
cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 11:21 PM UTC
Our last connection with the mythic.
My mother remembers the day as a girl
she jumped across a little spruce
that now overtops the sandstone house
where still she lives; her face delights
at the thought of her years translated
into wood so tall, into so mighty
a peer of the birds and the wind.
Too, the old farmer still stout of step
treads through the orchard he has outlasted
but for some hollow-trunked much-lopped
apples and Bartlett pears. The dogwood
planted to mark my birth flowers each April,
a soundless explosion. We tell its story
time after time: the drizzling day,
the fragile sapling that had to be staked.
At the back of our acre here, my wife and I,
freshly moved in, freshly together,
transplanted two hemlocks that guarded our door
gloomily, green gnomes a meter high.
One died, gray as sagebrush next spring.
The other lives on and some day will dominate
this view no longer mine, its great
lazy feathery hemlock limbs down-drooping,
its tent-shaped caverns resinous and deep.
Then may I return, an old man, a trespasser,
and remember and marvel to see
our small deed, that hurried day,
so amplified, like a story through layers of air
told over and over, spreading.
9.5k
A TERM OF ENDEARMENT.....
As a little girl my girl friends dad
Called me BIRDBRAIN....
And that never bothered me.
I knew it was a term of endearment.
Of course back then I didn't know
What endearment meant.
But I knew he was kidding...
His house was the fun house
Of the neighborhood.
His wife was an angel.
We had taffy pulls,
Mrs G made popcorn *****
And lined up chairs
In front of the television
So we kids could watch
Wrestling....
with a big bubble magnifying glass
And she served us bowls of popcorn.
Always something to do....
I went to the quarry one time with them
Looking for fancy rocks....
Mr. G, Mr. G is this a good one?
No Birdbrain, it's just sandstone...
He was a fancy rock collector...
The name Birdbrain was so special to me...
A name which was spoken with
Endearment....
I'm sure of that.....
By judy
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 6:45 PM UTC
i hail from heat, heat
in the heart and in the home, in the head and in the heel of the
sword that swings for both justice and action.
i inherit this love, this life and these virtues like heirlooms.
i inherit this boldness from you
i inherit the air of a highborn lady, while not without the humility of a low born daughter from you
i inherit gentle hands of craft into fists of rage and fire that melt away sorrows from you
i rise and fall, for from you
i breathe.
unspoken it was passed down, and yet it stirs and whispers to me in my bones of
ancient thought and force,
passed down from kin to kin, from one blood to another of
temperance and will
that flow like tradition—
a book written on age-old sandstone pressed eons below the earth,
text mapped in bloodlines over a body, not alone. never fading.
you bid me to rise from dust and ashes into the woman of your forging,
and so with a kiss between my brow for
farewell and fortune
i may live with your light tucked into my heart,
because my inheritance lives within me.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:51 AM UTC
relaxing? relaxing would be a sin against myself. see God spun and wove golden bits of wisdom in these curls that are mine. see these curls spring loud with
songs of my Nubian
mothers and war cries of my Rasta fathers. see these curls bounce proud to the rhythm of tribal drums and the foot prints of my sisters from Manila reside
there as they roll
lumpia between the coils and springs. see these curls have moved sandstone bricks cross deserts, building divine architecture so perfectly aligned
with cosmos and
planets until Moses told Pharaoh to Let My People Go. these curls have traveled cross oceans and triangles packed like sardines squalid below the decks
of ships. see these
curls have been ***** by the nasty ***** in the big house and suffered sun strokes in cotton fields. see these curls sing loud and strong. See these curls
were branded and forced
at gunpoint behind ******** barbed wire fences gassed to death in the name of so called purification. see these curls bleed the pain of fire hoses and dog
bites and whites
only signs. see these curls wont back down gainst no burnin crosses gainst no swastikas gainst no elephant ******** talkin all that jazz on fox and cnn. see
these curls dance
wildly off beat to straight rhythms that drone on in 4/4 time c major sixty bpm. see these curls are Mas and my Grammas. see my curls are too proud to sit
back and chill and won’t take no **** or heat or hot air. see these curls cannot be contained in braids or scarves or jars of creamy crack. see
these curls dare you
to force them to
coerce them to
straighten up
their act. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls. my curls.
my curls will not
******* relax.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 12:03 PM UTC
My body burns to rove far from man-made
buildings, prisons for the modern soul.
I need to traverse the frontiers white man stole
from those who made it their home.
I've been down to the Everglades of Florida.
Fan boats flew through the estuary lines with roots
of mangroves. I've been to the Hoh Rain Forest of
Washington where fog descended on the shoreline
and married the sulfur smell rising from hot springs.
I must experience America's coast to coast beauty.
Every spare seconds I spend luxuriating in the
sun, thinking of all the places untouched.
My list of desires grows as the glaciers
of Glacier recede in Montana, beckoning
me to the Rocky Mountain Peaks.
Old Faithful gushes, surrounded by wolves and grizzlies.
Someday I'll cross Yellowstone's expansive mountain ranges.
from Idaho to Montana to Wyoming. On the arches of
Utah I'll face my fear of heights and find solace at
the tops of time-layered sandstone towers.
Descending the Grand Canyon I'll study beautiful
colors exposed by years of erosion. In winter
Death Valley will be braved. The lowest and direst point
will exhilarate me with scaled creatures as sand
dunes whisper my name with every hot breath.
The Badlands of South Dakota will hope I come
backpacking through prairies to watch precious bison roam.
California Redwood trees and I will stand side by side
as friends. Yosemite will call me to her cliffs and I will chase
waterfalls and sequoia groves until I've seen it all.
I ache to explore the terrain that bears
my name, the country I call home.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 1:09 PM UTC
Some days I wake up with my neck slick
beads of sweat soak the pillowcase,
my hair as though I've been bobbing for apples.
Perhaps I should be.
I'm starving, I think,
for the kind of knowledge which is dubbed
forbidden or shrouded,
hidden.
Written in redwoods,
eyes like nebulae
and sandstone futures.
If I could read the Andes like braille, what revelations would
erupt?
I'm yearning to greet the haunts and beetles once my clock
runs out.
But I lie
awake
and am greeted by
no one.
I'm frozen, now,
with molasses
feet
like running from the Golem in a January dream.
My fingertips leave damp, checked cotton, reaching out with an earnest desperation, and
I'm left sticky, swatting at vapors.
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 4:48 PM UTC
Breeze bellows,
leaves echo in
quivering psithurism,
dithering like
unbroken smoke,
this approaching omen goads.
Dozing crows
slumbering in rows,
droves of locusts'
silenced drone,
almost comatose in repose;
nighttime overtones
choir of toads'
raspy croaks
answered by alto
of crickets' orchestral strokes.
Gust encroaches;
robed boughs
cloven open,
bring into
scope and focus
me juxtaposed,
suspended apropos.
Although motionless
and petrified in stone,
provoked by zephyr
coaxing to and fro;
swaying pendulous
and no longer frozen,
locus gently thrown.
Death rattle moan
evoked from throat,
reflex can't say no
to rigor rigidly posed,
final sigh in silence,
awoken vocal,
expelled and disposed.
Smote by
morose emotion,
gun loaded then exploded
by neurosis,
now bloated
necrosis decomposes
into gross ochre.
This trophy
and this ode
both an opus to
my inability to cope;
romanced i proposed,
eloped and betrothed to
my own
inappropriate composure.
Pocket full of posies
plucked when luck bestowed
and tears in a cup, a toast;
crying copiously,
tempest runneth overflowed,
eyes swollen and soaked.
Dipped my toes
in the coast
of this ocean's
amorphous folds,
gripped by undertow
holding control of my soul;
swiftly shipwrecked in
shallow shoal,
an old atoll.
On sandy floor,
water burrows roads;
digging, carving, roams
through unmarrowed
silica and sandstone
eroding into a cove.
A host for
opal geode trove,
enclosing a
technicolor rose,
from the depths
a glowing mosaic shone
Unopened lotus floats
on foam
of lapping waves,
a boat;
prone to no
grandiose notion
or motive,
adrift as wind stokes.
I suppose
this only shows
the total corrosion
into which I dove,
the only foes to oppose
are those of burdens, so
only weightless can I atone-
I must let go.
Mar 11, 2024
Mar 11, 2024 at 11:02 AM UTC
The trail rose up
through the sand
and sage covered hills
following the sinews of a land
scoured by fire and flood.
Even the most severe carving
here was nothing
compared to the city below-
its concrete grid
glaring over my shoulder-
sprawled out,
******* on its dingy
comforter of smog-
******* up
the dust of the desert
around it.
The trail led me up.
Up past twisted
juniper bones,
past pale green yuccas
curling
fine white filagree
from their dagger blades,
past sandstone boulders
swirled like confections,
past ancient cooking pits
nested with ash,
and ghost-like hands
outlined on stone-
to a white cliff face
up-thrust
beneath the cloudless sky.
From a lone stump
a pinyon jay squawked
drawing my eyes down.
A sentinel
to its comrades-
who rose up
from the draw to my left
and sailed in twos and threes
sinking down into
the draw on my right.
Right before me,
around me, behind me,
first two- then six,
then tens of metallic blue
wings beating heavily against
the unfamiliar desert air.
They had come down.
Down from the scrubby
forests of pine.
Down from snow
covered slopes.
Hungry,
they searched the green
fingers of the washes-
the winter forcing them
down across the trail
that was drawing me up.
They passed close by,
wing beats feathered my ears,
first up, then down-
the sentinel
keeping an eye .
Listening, suddenly hearing
my breath beat
against the wind-
I stood motionless, perched
beyond starting
and destination-
blue wings lifting
the hunger within.
Tom Spencer © 2017
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC
Health department signs litter the grass areas,
"Do not make contact with the water;
Swimming forbidden".
Less than twenty years ago I learnt to swim here
And fish too, once i even drowned!
Sometimes my friends and I would
Catch Eels then sell them
To the local Chinese restaurant.
I treasure those memories of my childhood.
This fresh water lake surrounded
By trees taller than buildings
My beautiful haven from the city, hidden
Between main roads and highways
that only the locals know.
Sitting on sandstone rocks
I see my reflection amongst the lily pads.
Beyond the depths an entanglement of
Roots, seaweed and *******
Natural mandalas made by tadpoles
Ripple across the murky brown surface
Whilst a rather large water dragon
Sun bakes on the riverbank
And ducks glide by reminding me
Of the canoes we used to capsize
And I appreciate how simple life
Used to be.
ELEETE J MUIR
May 11, 2018
May 11, 2018 at 7:56 AM UTC
Drip, Drop, Splash
Drip, drop, splash...
Water, as it finds its final resting place below.
Falling with fellow (drops),
Falling off the cliff side, (drip)
Falling to form very special, beautiful waterfall, (splash).
Coming out into the light.
Waters from storms aged years ago.
Making their way through the tiniest of sandstone cracks.
Having been inside the mountains above for eons.
Not seeing daylight for all those years,
What a surprise, when finding themselves
falling and falling,
to make,
Drip, Drop, Splash...
Brian Hill - 2019
Inspired by Poetry in the Park @ Zions
Mar 1, 2019
Mar 1, 2019 at 9:29 PM UTC
the cascade of clear blue falls even in the midst of the furvous night
the call of a bird echoes cross canyons composed of ages of old
the glint off amber cliffs calls to the reflection of ancience
floors of sandstone riddled with stagnant ghosts of footprints
these paths were once walked by those larger than life
we search for purpose radiometrically
estimating the desperation in the dating
allowing our hearts to sink to an endless expanse of unexplored sediment
grasping onto the aching for the pleasure beneath the pain
self decay feels natural at the bottom of the ocean
peace comes naturally while disappearing into pieces
it will find me upon the return of the rogue daughter to the expanse in which she belongs
may my atomic descendents one day hold the fossils of my being between their fingers
let the earth shake under the feet of whom possesses my bones
and let them keep digging, let them excavate all of us whole
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 8:21 AM UTC
take sips sip sips
tumble down the flowers
bundled in white towels at
my rose hips
from raised graves
velvet hearse
sandstone paves
push away stones along way
soothe
change patterns
surprise
break the consonance
act-like defiance
it's harder than we thought
hurry
get back to the tower
don't choke on the pink powder
before I get there
complex lush
doesn't need any soldiers
off horse, of course
only I reside in these gardens
part my own lawns to my great gates
a dosed beast waits
and I must return
Aug 18, 2020
Aug 18, 2020 at 2:14 AM UTC
Grand mamma always told me
Hold your head up proud
And never accept to blend in with the crowd-
Kinna strange the way
I'm parting rivers right now
And how if sitting silent
I'm truly speaking out loud
Long ago and swiftly
Juggling dozens of eggs
Though trying not to split 'em
I tripped up on some pegs
The yoke leaked out
Mixed with the blood
From my head
I didn't whimper yet I knew
My beauty was dead-
But that's how it grows
All you Elaine's and Ed's
Through brazen heat
And tempest sleet
Chewing on led
While inspires cry
And empires fry
That sandstone shifts
And driftwood drifts
Alone I merrily roam
With my for sure's and if's
Never dissuading
The hemispheres
Of my bliss
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 1:33 PM UTC
Two billion years ago
the river we call Colorado
opened a **** in the Kaibab Plateau
sculpting sandstone, granite, and limestone spectra
on the rugged canyon walls -
reflecting the seering Arizona sun.
Millennial torrents scoured the surface.
Juniper and Aspen, torn from the expanding banks,
****** into the river's red-stained vortex.
All the while the restless Colorado,
obedient to gravity's law,
scoured its bed a mile below the rim.
The last dinosaur perished - choked by volcanic soot.
Pangaea rumbled, groaned and split
and an eye-blink ago our African parents
stood to take their first faltering steps.
Their progeny crossed the Bering bridge
roaming south to build stone shelters
tucked against these canyon walls.
Did the Havasupai huddle in fright
of the jagged firelight searing the skies -
pounding the air across the hollows?
And emerging at storm’s end
did they gaze at the rainbow mist
spread over the buttes and valleys?
After dusk, with fires withering to embers,
did they rest supine,
heads pillowed on their arms,
pondering the jewel case universe above?
November, 2006
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 10:51 AM UTC
He's sandstone in the desert, I'm the blue sky wrapped tight around him.
I kiss him with raindrops and in return he makes flowers grow.
We are like a lion and a nightingale; nothing alike but our marriage is the truest union.
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 7:06 PM UTC
They huddle in the cold damp darkness
grateful for the sheltering sandstone
shuddering at each echoing blast
a remorseless dull ache
like their meagre rations
eyelids shutting wrinkling between attacks
seeking peace and inner sleepless solace.
'Them docks is taking a pasting.'
'Me Dad works there.'
Another attack, tunnels rumble
evoking century old echoes
of rusty trundling drum-line wagons
bearing sandstone blocks to build the docks
now being blitzed blighting the night sky.
The morning brings a dusty disquiet.
Merseyside emerges curses soldiers on.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 10:42 AM UTC
Would you sing to me? Your voice calms me like the sound of cicadas in distant summer/I listened to the album you made me over and over, the way your voice glides into the notes, weaves itself into my bones/Your hair looks so beautiful in sunlight, soft sandstone red/ I love to see you smile, your secrets behind your teeth/Get dressed up and let me show you off, wear the dress that gives you Venus de Milo shoulders/I just can’t take my eyes off you, a rare star, unbridled constellations of your eyes/ let me draw you, capture your life in this small moment, paper and pensiveness/I just want to hold you, feel the needed press of our bodies/I need you right now, you are not my breath but I breathe easier when you are here/I’ll come over to your place tonight, I know you must be tired, I see the way the world wears us, slow drips of waxen time against our skin/I found this flower in the yard, it reminded me of you, the petals delicate in their sweetness, the strength in the roots/I love your family, their warmth a hearth fire, always returned to/Would you make some art for me? I see the way you pull beauty from the wound in your side/Read me some of your poetry, what does your soul sound like?/I wrote this poem for you, you are written on my soul/I wrote a song for you, words were not enough, here is the sound of us/would you play music with me? Let the harmonies carry outside our bodies/I carry your heart with me, I carry it with me.
Nov 5, 2021
Nov 5, 2021 at 5:23 PM UTC
When Peg laughs like Liz
deep woman-hearted laugh
eating beef jerky on Mesa Verde
the good hearts and smarts of women
come back to me, not guessing
any better than they at the time what love
meant, leaving them behind in sandstone time
going to my own cement, sandstone
or good mountain grave
having seen the sharp-shinned and sparrow
hawk flying and at rest, not at peace,
seeking prey from a ponderosa snag.
I left my woman behind to float
alone down the long canyon for feathers
and signs, she's making camp
the moon half full, the sun half high
sky full of planets birds and stars
I look up from the rocks
elements
housekeeping, thinking
love that's learned to love
from earlier loves
laughs remembered, heard
in the laugh of the woman who is my wife.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:30 AM UTC
~
i stand before this kneeling bench,
no sanctuary of our making;
its walls here open thrown,
on stained glass windows found
strewn upon the sand,
its tide-washed, polished glass,
my feet find holy ground;
my sandals left at driftwood door.
incense burns upon the wind,
its salty spray is mingled,
with my own upon
these joy-stained cheeks.
the worshippers that went before
have built a temple out of wood,
hewn, untouched by human hand,
a steeple to the sky is lifted,
and within its shelter,
remnants of a ring of fire,
smoke once lifted to the
heavens by believers true;
this church i see through salted eyes,
this scape awash in teeming life,
here i drink this living wine;
its ebb, its rush, its living in
each moment without need,
to connect each dot, or even speak.
i long to live at razor's edge,
where sands and tides collide;
the rocky shoals where dungeness,
find sustenance and shelter;
the coves where seabirds feed their young,
above the sandstone cliffs;
the bar beneath a setting sun,
in flames awash in waves;
find comfort ‘neath
the storm-shaped pine,
feel longing in the stinging air.
these cheeks that weep,
though want of tears,
not in sorrow mind you,
but in joy of freedom,
the lure of siren alter call;
of a close horizon on a misty morn,
the haunting breath of orca,
just beyond my sight;
the bark of ocean’s lion,
the roar of distant waves;
with these my prayers i send,
as i offer this my praise;
this church of no man’s making,
here i come for cleansing,
to breathe the life that i am given!
~
*post script.
by nature we are spiritual creatures;
spiritual... not religious. reading your
sea-scaped prose inspires me; planning
changes in my own life even more so!!
it is said that we return to what we know
best... the ocean calls...*
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 10:05 AM UTC
Today is your birthday, spindle-top maid.
Another year of desolate bridges.
Bridges by us, once believed to be true,
now laid to rest in mineralised brine.
Though my desires have long since faded,
small town streets will forever sing your name,
calling, calling, for youth and infant love.
Time may have set, but as with Giza stone
you lay in evidence of what has been.
And now, in years progressed, I tend to this,
my page. Some hungover apology,
for cruelness, that in ignorance, I wreaked.
For, though in my life there is ugliness,
and evil now apparent in this world;
I have learnt through experience, virtue
of kindness, of careful tread upon land.
Oh, mother of Horus, and Christian slave,
you bought me devotion in time of aid.
I'm calling, calling, in meekness undue,
for your sandstone likeness to hold in place.
With time comes erosion, African wind,
to scorch at the kindness, held to your breast.
So, in fear of forced blindness, cynical
waste; I mumble in this dirt-kissed prayer.
God of knowledge, oh God of braying flock,
bring to me your scripture, word of Thoth.
All so I can deliver, all so I
can sing; this tuneless ode of my redress,
this humbled hope for spring.
Dec 29, 2013
Dec 29, 2013 at 6:32 PM UTC
Sub-atomic particles
the atoms they form
molecules, cell organelles
cells, machinery of life
organs, organisms
communities and ecosystems
planets, solar systems, galaxies
galactic clusters and their inverse
black holes the doors to other
universes, a contradiction
in terms.
For language and its shadow
consciousness must hold matter
the material world snugly inside concepts
theories and hypotheses to be
experimentally verified using vision
and the other senses, collecting data
and interpreting the known facts
accumulated over time.
Can matter
exist without a consciousness to behold it?
Believing in
our mortality (the species)
we have created God
(a supreme being)
probably not carbon-based
to encompass every universe
but is God
inside or outside
consciousness? Can God
tell us what to do
or must we tell God
alone
what to do?
Here is ego
projecting personality, exerting force
on community, asserting the existence
and predominance of component DNA.
An already hackneyed theory that DNA
survival drives
procreation, personality, savings bonds
everything but poetry (most poems included).
Mustache, cowboy hat
horse whisperer, gulag master
Odysseus, King Lear
salvation in the details.
Yes, these personalities individual and interesting
as opossum, bear
oak and ash
beech nut, pine cone
Grand Canyon sandstone, Green Mountain granite.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 5:13 PM UTC