Category Archives: poetry

Morning Fog

The thick wall cozies against the window,
Concealing the morning behind shades of gray,
Except for a single spot of warmer hue
Rising on the horizon;
I watch the grays move and shift as they slowly wane,
Revealing a muted scene to the score
Of a few barking dogs
And subtle laps of waves against the shore;
The blues take over the greys,
Warming up the expanding sea and sky,
For all to see.

Be well,

Monty

A Playful Poet

A Playful Poet
(after Sonnet by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Oh!
What gifts are these words for
Me, a
Playful poet
With a shovel golden, for
Me, a
Wannabe beacon
Of light so bright
To
Expose any shadow or rift
Enlighten this
Page, with meaningful change/
More than /less
A glimmer
Of
Joy within the dead
Gray.

Oh! To
Lift the spirit
Is sometimes back-
breaking work, The
Muses
Long gone
Astray,
And
A scrambled mind once flush
With the words of Parnassus
Now all but empty with
Just a
Few thoughts newer,
Just the smallest touch of light
To
Write by, to put
These
Oh so little,
Inklings into sonnet-
Form (better men
Than I); To
Take worded images to flight
And answer the question who/
‘s fashion
Our images have been created in?
To express a
Life, not shrewd,
Not mechanic
But in the way
of Songs
Without disbelief, with souls
That
Flicker
Like a moth
For
The light of a
Day;
To vanish
The naysayers, To battle in
The irrevocable
Night.

Oh! To ask what
Does
It
All mean?
To take on this
Barren
page in this dark age
Of
Ours;
To be unapologetically here;
To embrace the
Tired men
And the
Worn women;
And
To lay around their necks
The
Flowers
Of the
Seasons;
And
To lift their heads toward the
Sunrise and the sunset
As
Once before.

Oh! What
Does
It
Mean?
He shall
Let there
Be light not
For one
But for all of us to arise;
To
Wrench
Off the blindfold from every/one;
To lift the banner
Of life from
The
Western
Skie’s
Setting sun; and
To mark
it
With
His
Name
Forevermore.

Be well,

Monty

Back in the Garden

Green leaves and rain trampled flowers surround,
This born again garden abounds,
Wild from the plum rains,
New shoots confidently rising into the sky,
Praising the Lord in thanks for the sun,
A sun, barely risen, yet burning hot,
Only the slightest breeze providing respite,
Underneath the blue sky light.

Be well,

Monty

And Off I Go

Oh, flow, flow and off I go,
To where, to where I don’t know,
Even He is curious to see where I’ll later be,
This path is curious; it eddies and turns,
But always toward; it never returns,
Sometimes I pause, I take a rest,
The pace slows after I get something off my chest,
Yet never fully stops, like nature’s clock,
Constantly forward moving, either fast or oozing,
Stones of all sizes lie in the way,
Pebbles that I swiftly pass by with just a ripple,
Or boulders that can’t be seen over or past,
Yet I always find the hidden pass,
Sometimes I move in silent ways,
Sometimes I move in roaring waves,
Sometimes I move to a beat – in time like a perfect rhyme,
Other times I move awkward and offbeat,
No rhyming necessary in making my way,
No rhyming necessary to have something to say
And sometimes I move with irony,
Where what I do doesn’t match what I say,
What can I say? It just happens this way.
Oh, flow, flow, I’m on the go,
To where, to where, no one knows,
This is okay,
There’s always a little bit of mystery this way,
Enjoy the turns, the curious diversions,
Someone once said life is like a highway,
Which may at times be true,
But more often than not, I think its not;
Life is a detour on a road unknown,
With every turn a new seed sown;
Full of surprises and wonder,
Both joyous and somber, happy and sad,
(Not bad when I have the right mindset)
To let go, to let God.
To accept there sometimes is no rhyme scheme,
There is no clean closure to the scene,
Just time to flow on, to move along.
Oh, flow, flow, and off I go.

Be well,

Monty

Early Morn

I never realized how much light bends upon the horizon;
Brightening up the early morning hours before the sun peaks into view. The sky a mix of blues and yellows as the night ebbs into morning. When suddenly an explosion of orange breaks across the sea announcing the new day’s arrival.

All this happening in the span of minutes. Nothing like a horizon event to emphasize the speed at which we are living. Ironic that flying around the galaxy like a spinning top is so peaceful. And now an hour or so later, the sun’s pace having slowed, the sea’s blues ripple with a cooling breeze. All this before the house awakes. #Joy

Be well,

Monty

Dreams

Another go at a Golden Shovel…

Dreams
(after Earliest Spring by William Dean Howell)

Dreams be a-tossing,
Hers in his,
Underneath a mussed mane;
A head turned of
Snows
White in
The wildest
locks of curling eddies
And
forgotten tangles
Of a gnarly old lion,
He dreams of her like
A war-weary soldier dreams of his girl back home while on the march;
As she cometh
In
His vision, his voice turns hoarse
Begging her to stay with
Him, yearning for her tempestuous
breath
Upon his lips through
All
The
Moaning
Nights, Her lusty gasps escaping from the chimneys
Into the dark and
humid air, his strangling hand didn’t ‘thwart
Her passions and all
The
Hollows
In heart broken and
Shattered into sharp angles,
That cut through the round
And slice with the
Shuddering
Knives across roofs from house
To house, threatening
The sleep of
Winter
And
Winter’s death.

But,
These youthful dreams in
The wrinkles of my eyes call my
Long gone rigid heart
To awaken and I
Feel
The
Once thriving life
Of
The young wood
And
The
Deflowered meadow,
How thrilling
The
Essence pulses
From there and that
Of one’s own
Kindred
With
All the fibers
That
Vibrate and lift
My lids to see her floral bud
“Oh my!” And
My blade
Rises
To
The
Sun/
To/ward
The east within
the
South’s inscrutable
Shadow
Cast deep
In
The
Oak’s
Roots, where chill
melts my core
And under
The
West’s gathering
Wings to drift.

Nay,
Come back to
Earth’s
Orbit, old man, life
Not yours in
Mine
Some-
One else’s prescience,
Or
Dream
Or
Desire.

But how,
Shall
I
Shake this that I cannot name?
Is it
All wrong or alright?
Memory comes
For
A
Moment
And
Goes,
Dreams rapture
Of
A life
Passed, ineffable,
Once perfect
As
If
A ripened blackberry
In
The
Brier.

Dreams leafless,
There
By
My
Door,
I trembled,
I bled a
Sense
of
Foreboding of the
Naked rose.

Be well,

Monty