CHAIR ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

On the side of the road,
next to the concrete barrier
separating the northbound lanes
from the southbound,
a lawn chair.

How does a single chair
come to be placed upright
on the shoulder of the highway?
Why only one chair?
Why not two, and a table as well?
What if I want to watch
the passing traffic with a friend,
where will she sit?
Where will we set
our drinks and hors d’oeuvres?

WALKING ALONG U STREET

Man, was she mad at him,
I mean really pissed,
the way she was yelling
and cursing at him there on the sidewalk,
neverminding all of us walking past
who were looking and wondering what he had done.
He was trying to calm her down,
speaking carefully while walking away,
but that only made her madder.
Someone was gonna get hurt,
and I think it was gonna be him.
I was expecting her to swing one of her bags at him;
the purse in her left hand was big and looked full,
and would’ve hurt, might’ve laid him out flat,
right there on the sidewalk along U Street between 12th and 13th.
I edged over to the curb in case she started swinging.
The guy on a bike next to me
said he saw them come out of a restaurant,
him first, then her, fast,
yelling how dare he leave her with the bill since he had asked her out.
I wonder what ended up happening to them.
They moved on toward 11th Street,
him trying to stay out of range of at least her swing,
and her doggin’ him the whole way.
I moved on toward 16th Street,
minding my business and feeling glad I wasn’t him.
The guy on the bike moved out into traffic,
got honked at by a driver, and flipped him off.

I gotta get into the city more often.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON ALONG NORTHWEST BRANCH

Grilled meat carries on the spring breeze.
Families gather around picnic tables.
Children run in playgrounds
and in the grass along the river,
pick dandelions, skip stones.
There's a baseball game on one field,
soccer on another.
People stroll on the bikepath.
It's an all-American scene
with faces that are Mayan, Pipil, and Lenca.

IN THE CHURCH OF THE CYCLIST

I bow over the handlebars
in earnest contemplation,
the whirr of the chain my hymn,
the road my text.

Legs turn the cranks; rhythm
and repetition bring solace;
movement is reason.

In the toil and sweat of the ride
there is purpose; catharsis in the ache
of muscles straining for greater distance
and revelation of what one is capable.

A Routine Bomb at New Verse News

My poem, "A Routine Bomb," has been posted at The New Verse News. The poem was written after an unexploded bomb from WW2 was unearthed in the city center of Munich.  Unexploded bombs from WW2 are fairly routine in Germany and to a lesser extent in other countries in Europe.  The posting of the poem is timely as another unexploded bomb was found in Berlin earlier this week.

Many thanks to my friend, Petra Noble, for making me aware of the bomb in Munich last August and for thoughts and ideas that went into the poem.

Day 31: George Herbert's Easter Wings

Happy Easter!  We finish this month of Welsh and Irish poetry (mostly Welsh) with the 17th century Welsh poet, George Herbert's, Easter Wings.  Herbert was Welsh-born (Montgomeryshire), educated at Cambridge, represented Montgomeryshire in Parliament, and then took up residence as an Anglican minister in Wiltshire, where he died in 1633 from tuberculosis, at the age of 39.  All of his poems were religious in theme; a few, like Easter Wings, also were "pattern poems" in which the format of the lines also formed a pattern related to the theme.  If you rotate the poem to the right, the two stanzas appear to be wings of  a bird in upward flight.  I've included an image of the poem as originally printed below (thanks to Wikipedia).


EASTER WINGS

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
    Though foolishly he lost the flame,
       Decaying more and more,
         Till   he   became
            Most poore:
            With     thee
         O   let   me  rise
       As  larks, harmoniously,
    And sing this  day  thy victories:
Then  shall  the  fall  further  the  flight  in me.

My   tender  age   in   sorrow  did   beginne
     And still with sicknesses and shame
       Thou didst so punish sinne,
          That      I     became
             Most thinne.
            With   thee
          Let    me     combine,
       And feel this day thy victorie:
     For,  if  I  imp  my  wing  on  thine,
Affliction   shall   advance  the  flight   in  me.   

Day 30: Englynion-- Welsh Short Poems

When most of us think of short poems with rules governing form and number of syllables, we likely think of haiku.  Welsh poetry has its own short form in the englyn (plural englynion).  There are eight types of englynion, which you can read about here.  The most commonly used is the englyn unodl union-- the straight, one-rhyme englyn.  This consists of four lines of ten, six, seven, and seven syllables, respectively.  the seventh, eighth, or ninth syllable of the first line introduces the rhyme, which then appears at the end of each successive line.

Like haiku, englynion sometimes offer a seemingly simple image, from which the reader can derive deeper meanings (or not).  The following englyn by Walter Davies (Gwallter Mechain, 1761-1849) offers one example:

CYFNOS (NIGHTFALL)

Y nos dywell yn distewi,-- caddug
          Yn cuddio Eryri,
     Yr Haul yng ngwely'r heli,
     A'r lloer yn ariannu'r lli.

Silence brought by the dark night:  Eryryi's
          Mountains veiled by mist:
     The sun in the bed of brine,
     The moon silvering the water.


Howell Elvet Lewis' Gobaith Dibrofiad (Life's Morning) is more direct in its feeling and meaning.  Lewis also makes use of internal rhymes-- the "ai" in the second and third lines-- and the near "mirror image" sounds in "blodau" (Welsh for "flower") and "bladur" ("blade") in the fourth line.

GOBAITH DIBROFIAD (LIFE'S MORNING)

Bore oes--O! mor brysur--y gwibia
          Gobaith ar ei antur:
     Canai lai pe gwelai gur
     Y blodau dan y bladur

Life's morning--O, how quickly-- fleets
          Hope on its adventure:
     It would sing less if it saw the pain
     Of the flowers beneath the scythe.

(Welsh originals from the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse; English translations from the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English).