Author: Kel

  • Worse For Wear (Poem)

    it is enough for me, this life

    one I’ve chosen again and again

    now worn and fraying like a favorite shirt

    threadbare in places with some holes

    no longer a protection from chill or rain

    a kindly reminder of advancing constraints

    still serviceable for my brief season

    nothing I’d offer to anyone else

    a tattered beautiful thing

  • Dew On The Grass (Poem)

    mornings finally bring

    a hint of relief to fields withered brown

    worn to distress by heat and drought

    unceasing demands of worrisome summer

    come autumn, will there be respite

    not just for lands to lie fallow

    but also ourselves

  • Sunrise Service (Poem)

    will we rest at all

    our surround urges us to run ever faster

    in futile race after pyrite and gold

    each will slip from skeletal grasp and return

    a mineral added to the dirt, unheeding that we died

    let us bow our heads and pray

  • Unexpected (But I Was Warned)-(Poem)

    once I decided to throw away this world

    as a glittering prize that can never be reached

    I began to see the vivid greens of grass and tree,

    such variegated hues, with sudden splashes of contrast

    in the cardinal perched upon a limb or a robin’s bold breast

    I view these now when my eyes are failing

    I hear the mad chatter and scold from backyard squirrels

    with ears likewise diminished for their task

    as if in these shortened minutes before I depart

    a veil has fallen away that once obscured

    and I walk amidst light that dances with the laughter of emptiness

  • Soldier Boys (Poem)

    a sighting of a mountain cicada, green-shrouded

    silent, perhaps dying or dead

    a gentle thing out of place on the hot tarmac of the road

    far different from the first brood that appeared one year on the Gulf

    huge monstrous beings with bright red eyes

    wings so sharp that they would draw blood

    if their pointed neon-hued legs did not do that first

    (I bled a lot that year, being insatiably curious)

    soon they were EVERYWHERE

    covering not just trees but everything outdoors

    coating the banks of bayous and the surface of the pool

    they changed the rhythms of life by making us adjust

    then vanished, a short season of dark magic

    we called them soldier boys

    I never knew why

  • I Would Have Preferred A Wake Of Vultures (Poem)

    she is gone. that is all.

    the how, the why, the when are nothing.

    they cannot change these things:

    the bed no longer warmed by her long limbs.

    the blanket dampened by my tears.

    the pillow lonely without her head.

    that she walked into death with willing hands,

    the river her only road of escape,

    this does not matter.

    her absence is the bedrock of grief,

    the hard ground where I have lain,

    and from here I have to stand.

  • Your Name, Forgotten (Poem)

    the wind knew what I would not

    whispered it through the trees

    and they remembered it also

    made it shine like gold on every leaf

    weighing so heavy with unspoken love

    felling each one by one

    a foliaged pool spilled across the coal dust

    the dry rustle as I walked

    the brilliant glint that caught the sun

    these poured recall to my cracked broken heart

    I knelt in the trail and cried

  • The Wild Cherry (Poem)

    the wild cherry lies half hidden beneath a scaled root

    an ancient finger reaching in gnarled arboreal hunger

    it fell ripened red with a side of yellow but would sour the tongue

    though the oak might seek that tang as a bracing relief

    from the sweetness of rotting things

    the land beyond the fence belongs to untamed plants and feral creatures

    and all that reach whatever end moulder there

    leaves joining fur and bones in the fecund of decay

  • The Return (Poem)

    so many times she said I died,

    then I’d take a breath and live.

    again. until the next time.

    years later I saw her.

    for me it was as if for the first time,

    yet she gazed at me and smiled,

    “I would know you anywhere.”

    when I left, she held my face in her hands,

    her touch a gentle fierce love.

    then I remembered.

    and I know why I returned.

  • Weather Change (Poem)

    before I open my eyes I know

    the hot sky will be overcast with gray

    my head so full of clouds heavy with their pressing need

    that I cannot lift it from the bed

    eventually I find surcease

    having become a parched field for any rain that might fall

    a bit of thanks, my handhold

    the memory of kindness received, a sturdy stick