Sunday, May 28, 2017

Poems from a dedicated service person and poet: Lew Taylor, deceased

Lewis B. Taylor, R.I.P.

THE OLD VETERAN

I was born in this house on a country lane
that has become a four-lane pavement
across fields my ancestors cleared
and my father farmed during all his years.

I have lived my years in this self-same house
at peace with all men, except when called to war
to defend the land my forebears built.
I was proud to fight, preserving the land I knew.

Now, I die in a land I do not know.
This is not the land my father built.
It is not the land I fought to save.
It is a foreign land, with ways I cannot comprehend.

Is it the fate of generations
to die in lands they never knew?

--Lewis B. Taylor, from Lees in the Pail, 2009
~~~

ON THE COPTS IN EGYPT

All light is lovely in darkness.
A candle can be a beacon on a starless night.
They who trim the flickering wicks
May light a whole land.

One who travels in reflected brilliance
Never knows the worth of one long candle.
Then, moving from light to darkness,
He gropes to find familiar forms.
Holding no candle of his own, he gropes.

And then at last he sees.

The source of brilliance is the shining of a million candles
Each held proudly high
By solitary trimmers of wicks.

--Lew Taylor, from Drippings in the Pail, 1995

de TOCQUEVILLE WAS RIGHT

He said,
Americans
Will prosper until they
Vote themselves money from public
Coffers.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Orwell
Saw it clearly,
A vociferous few
Can make themselves more equal than
Others.

--Lew Taylor, from Cinquains Caught in my Pail, 1998

AT THE FIFTIETH REUNION
(of the Class of '47, U. S. Naval Academy)

The Class
has seen a life of forty-thousand years
nurtured from more than eight-hundred roots,
each anchored here in honored ground.

Uncommon men united in common cause,
gathered from around the earth,
began here the voyage of The Class;
a voyage on eight-hundred compass headings
that embarked from our hallowed yard fifty years ago.

Mystic ties unseen join this now-shrinking band.
So long as survivors range the earth
they are The Class, wherever each may be.
There will be no new recruits.
And the loss of each man in his turn is mourned
in each remaining heart.

Service--honor--country
bound these men with lines too strong for breaking.
The link in the chain has been tested:
it beareth the strain.

--Lew Taylor, from Leaked from the Pail, 2003

c 2017 PL




Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Small pictures of spring: poems

2017 in Gulf Breeze, Florida (Gordon's yard)

pruning
azaleas . . . finding
one pink bloom
('12)
~~~

Decoration Day
his work-roughened hands
clean the pioneers tombstones
('97)
~~~

rainwater pollen yellow
('14)
~~~

A lone
coreopsis
rescued from a distant
bed, leans its yellow face into
the rain.
('14)
~~~

male cardinal
flashing in and out
of the lorapetalum
('15)
~~~

white-breasted squirrel
stands looking at the daisies
are they good to eat?
('13)
~~~

all this mid-May day
the doves across the way
calling . . . calling . . .
('13)
~~~

between camellias
and lorapetalum
the  stunted Shastas
('13)

Thurman Couch photo, '17

alone
but not lonely
me, the cat, the birds
('17)
~~~
~~~
c2017 PL bda lovepat press

Monday, May 15, 2017

Poems -- from today . . . backwards

May 15 - 2017

Between
morning bird calls
the sound of sirens as
they approach: a sheriff's speeding
cruiser.

RETIRED - YAY!
Walking
to mail birthday
cards, I watch two yellow
buses pass on this last Monday.
I wave.
~ ~ ~
May 14 2017

Neighbor's
mailbox askew
again, even after
I stripped the vine, and he attached
plywood.
~ ~ ~
May 13 2017

Cool breeze
at my back, an
opus of birdsongs, bright
sunshine's shadows on the wet grass.
Praise be!
~ ~ ~
May 12 2017

THE RETURN
A dove
under the seed
feeder--the first one I've
seen on this acre in two, three,
four years.
~ ~ ~
May 11 2017

Storming.
The cat is scared.
I try comforting him,
but he doesn't trust me, hides in
stairwell.

PL-- dba lovepat press

View from back deck of 505, WCDH
birdsong everywhere

Sunday, May 7, 2017

various and sundry - haiku/ senryu

A previous mission trip: Ursula, Colleen, Pat, Kathy, Mary

mission trip
no time to nap
no time to write
[2015]

water hyacinth
its slow twirling
down the bayou
[2015]

a motorcycle
louder than a semi
blasting by
[2015]

spring cold spell
checking on blackberries
I find narcissus
[2014]

the holly tree
I wished for
now higher than the roof
[2015]
between her photinia
and my euonymus
our doorways hidden
[2015]
son and wife visit
she can't know my coffee mug's
from his old girlfriend
[2014]

wedding dress for sale
worn once by mistake
call Mattie Helen
(from email forward of UK want-ads, etc.)
[2012]

Emptying book bags to check against requirements, then repacking them according to specifications. Mission trip, '15, UMCOR depot, Baldwin, Louisiana