Bandstands

“Belper River Gardens Bandstand” by Andy Mayers

 

round gazebos pavilions
and pergola octagons
stood village greens
crowded with summers
of swirled cotton candy
and lemonade mason jars
drawn into innocent
haphazard circles
of lawnchairs and wickered
fried chicken and pies

here fat politicians
in straw hats and vests
with a flask in each pocket
blew clouds of cigar smoke
and fogbanking speeches
across crinkled buntings
between martial music
played slightly off key
over lawns packed with bowties
and gingham checked modesty

children roamed happily
innocence safely
preserved among apricots
peaches and plums
wanting blue ribbon samples
while learning to sing
stirring patriot songs
alive with the civics
that promised fulfilling
tomorrows ahead

this once was America
land of my birth
where my parents came
seeking and finding
their most cherished dreams
this once was America
long before she and I
fell down disabled
from festering mordant
internal disease

 

 

From my books City of Pawns, Music of Scars and Legacies (vol. 1)

Stanchions

Photo From Pinterest

 

hewn granite splinters
cold cuboid shafts
plunged deep into
border soils down
below reach by the
fingers of freeze
a bucolic perimetry
surveyed in rods limns
the pale of grassed
livestock estates hems
the outskirts of visual
fields forlorn artifacts
wounded and bleeding
with rust of garroted
hard century cinches of
barbed iron wire when
taut in their turnings
were coaxing devices
that stretched rural air
post to post plumbed
and sturdy resisting
the impulse to wander
now lonely the era of
husbandry gone with
colonial ghosts these
stone purposeless pickets
lean bleak among weeds
left to wonder if life
will recall them to arms

 

 

From my book Small Noise

 

 

 

Sawmill

“Old Sawmill” by Giorgio De Michele

 

blades of industry

edged with cut notches

the serrate of

terrible teeth

taught to tear out

dimensions of uniform

lumber from unlovely logs

timber felled to feed

screams of the sawmill

great riots of motion

tanned leather belt drives

turned through gearworks

by stout wood pole pistons

arranged autodidact

design rustic genius

resolved to convert

flowing water to energy

sees the mechanics of

magic in circular visions

the wheel the big wheel

it all starts with the wheel

never ending so long

as the impulse to build

pushes man to a purpose

 

 

From my book Small Noise

Mid-Century Modern

Image From Pinterest

 

low and lean
flat planes cut into
private horizons
sleek linear simple
descendants of Wright
and the Bauhaus
interiors open
admitting of freeflow
that purges the mind

keeping faith with a
modernist minimal
tenet that form must
perforce follow function
unneedy of ornament
external walls glazed
with a generous ratio
communion with light
outside inside exchanged

bespoke avant-garde
set with new ecumenical
social imperatives
driving new viewpoints
new unbending sightlines
envisioning futures
released from the past
two world wars
turned and burned

clash of classical creeds
complex radical curves
of disturbing philosophy
vanished in clouds
of political cordite
old misleading shapes
of existence erased
baring brusquely undressed
acute angles of truth

Trivia

“Stonehenge” by Tom Tiedeman

 

mortise and tenon

sacrosanct joinery

mystic of power

conveyed by a secret

artisanal oath upon

female and male

conjugation that

beautiful passion

of natural biology

lending its form

to the function of

structure who wants

of a durable union

a coupling contrived

for the useable ages

fine fitted precision of

desert-set pyramids

sarsen stone henges

Homeric sleek galleys

the chair and the desk

where this gray-bearded

stiff-fingered poet

declaims all and sundry

his odd bits of trivial

knowledge that seem

best recorded if only

in doggerel verses

before they’re forgotten

Bridge of Sighs

“Bridge of Sighs” by John Singer Sargent

 

stones suspended in air

final passage for

secular sinners

in quail of departing

from all that is beautiful

sounding their last sobbing

breaths of contrition

their last rueful look at

pained visions of lives

barely dreamed

never lived

too late for a rectitude

leaving vain squander

en route to an airless

and deathless ignominy

bleak are the endings

imagined while crossing

from palace to prison

indifference expressed

by the masonry sentinels

mascaron faces who

watch life and love

pass beneath the despair

upon waters the doge

has commanded to flow

serene lifeblood in

day to day course of

enlightened republic

ingenious canalways

that temper the tides

wash the unsettling sound

of these sighs

out to sea

Crooked Little House

The Krzywy Domek House in Sopot, Poland

 

poured from fantasy
melting with modernity
pretentious art

 

 

From my books Pieces of Wine and Riverthink

Directions

“Cross and Weather Vane” by Arthur Dove

 

modern turns old

in my verdigris mouth

copper cupola skin

weathers newborn

ideas to deep tarnish

what once was a

smoothly articulate

vane in surmount of

my mind now stands

heedless of thought

bearing winds frozen

rusting in place

pointed permanently

at my cardinal past

 

 

From my books Pieces of Wine and Legacies (vol. 2)

Rustic Estate

Image from Pinterest

 

ponderosa pine logs
set mortise to tenon
organic esthetics
hewn craftsmanship
old as the bible
sweet domicile
trussed for a legacy span
bearing high pride of shelter
for countless descendants
generations of households
embraced by a warm
earthen finger-laid chinking
each lifetime absorbed
into honey grained wood
adding layers of life
a progressive patina
of purpose and promise
of laughter and love
fieldstone fireplace
gatherings find
conversation and argument
personal narratives
graceful and awkward
by turn sweep the hearth
with their histories
bundled and broomed
keeping tidy and neat
the comestible content of
iron-hung pots and potential
the foodstuff of character
timbered and toiling
to fatten the future

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Anasazi Vision

“Anasazi Ruins 3” by Sally Bills Bailey

cochineal and indigo

infused warp and weft

bursts of uncursed colors

in mystic geometry

supple tapestries

pendent on portals

cut high into sheer rock

whose outcrops supported

adobe pueblos

where surefooted

earthen skinned

cave-dwellers

climbed to make

contact and compact

to reshape society

join disparate tribes

in confederate worship

of southwestern sun

 

 

thriving peaceably

during dependable eons

of arable seasons

their ambient range

expanded by systemic

engineered roads

over hundreds of miles

connecting their sacred

mesas and canyons

this unlikely ideal

example of civilized

culture stood proud

till that sharp argent dawn

when one woman awoke

stunned to find all across

her familiar wide vista

that she was

completely alone

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)