It’s been a long time, I know… but let’s get back to a bit of poetry, shall we?

Meditation Over Prairie
John Casteen
If you don’t hear from me, everything’s fine.
In pressurized, recumbent air, trans-continental,
38,000 feet above the fruited plain, America
I bring you truer sustenance than food. Careful,
careful; everything here happens in the present tense.
The word forgetful has [...]

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“Macaque with Banana” in Stella Hwang’s Flickr Stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.
Animal Crackers
Douglas Woodsum
Running through a forest
in my bedroom
I pass a lion
sweet golden brown.
A gorilla hangs on a vine
near my closet.
I eat his bananas.
I rhinoceros chases me
under my bed.
I bite off his head.
Crisp gazelles crunch lightly;
giraffes slide down my throat.
Teeth-snapping alligators
and tasty tigers
get the better [...]

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“Empty Stadium at Night” in Sarah Quinn Armitt’s Flickr Stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.
Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game
by Denis Johnson
sometimes you know
things: once at a
birthday party a little
girl looked at her new party
gloves and said she
liked me, making suddenly the light much
brighter so that the very small
hairs shone above her lip. [...]

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Off to run my first half-marathon this weekend!  Wish me luck.  I’ll be back in this space on Tuesday with a full report from the race and a few stationery stores I hope to visit.  For now, we’re back to poetry on Fridays.  Enjoy the long weekend.

“Vancouver Sun Run 2007” from Kris Krug’s Flickr stream.
Licensed [...]

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“Lighter Moments” in Karthick Ramalingam’s Flickr stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.

The Overland Mail
by Rudyard Kipling
(Foot-Service to the Hills)
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day –
We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber retreat [...]

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Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
Dan Albergotti
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each [...]

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Buying Wine
Sebastian Matthews
When we were boys, we had a choice: stay in the car or else
follow him into Wine Mart, that cavernous retail barn,
down aisle after aisle — California reds to Australian blends
to French dessert wines — past bins loaded like bat racks
with bottles, each with its own heraldic tag, its licked coat
of arms, trailing [...]

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Thanks to my friend Dan, I’ve found a suitable answer to my desperate question regarding music not unlike the Deadwood theme: William Elliott Whitmore.  Frankly, Mr. Whitmore, where have you been all my life?!  A bearded, tattooed man described as having “a voice that sounds like the reincarnation of an old gospel preacher from [...]

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“We have a map of the piano” in Sashamd’s Flickr stream.
Licensed via the Creative Commons.

Lessons from the Garden
Richard Newman
This morning little mushroom heads,
like rusted dimes on toothpick stalks,
sprang up in our flower box.
An hour later they were dead,
withered in the summer heat.
Each spore stretched out its mortal coil
through dried-up peat and city soil
to die upon [...]

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The Back Yard by Twilight
Doug Van Gundy
These are the hours I love the best:
when the golden light of summer has climbed
to the top of the abandoned building next door
and all of the neighborhood
cats have slinked from inside
the woodpile beneath the back porch
and the cicadas and katydids
and grey tree frogs begin advertising
in the cacophonous personals section [...]

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