Category Andrew Hidas Poems

A moment of pause…

…Before gathering at your Tables of Gratitude.

(And please permit me to express my own gratitude for your engagement, your commentary, your kind words of encouragement.)

Thankfulness always,
for the watchful clouds and sky,
your fierce heart aglow.

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Check Facebook for this blog’s public page featuring daily snippets of wisdom and other musings from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied by lovely photography. http://www.facebook.com/TraversingBlog

Gratitude for photographer Elizabeth Haslam, whose photos grace the rotating banner at the top of this page. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Cirrus clouds photo by Andrew Hidas, with a serious assist from his iPhone and the heavens. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr...

THE LAST JAPANESE SOLDIER

(Hirō Onoda was a World War II Japanese army officer who surrendered only in 1974, having hunkered down in the jungles of the Philippines for nearly three decades, refusing to believe the war had ended. He returned to a hero’s welcome in Japan, where he died in early 2014.)

I’ve been tracking him, trying to ascertain
what caused this severance from reality,
this deep ignorance of the situation awaiting him.

Duty-bound to a fault, he goes about his pinched days
calmed by routine and subservient to no one save
the fear of exposure from the dark of his hut.

The world closes in.

It’s tragic, how he missed the good news that
followed the bad, the war’s disconsolate
end opening to vistas so long obscured.

I go in alone, no cover or air power behind me,
hoping to coax him into conversation and the
beginnings of trust, understanding, rapprochement.

My heart goes out to him.

He...

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

     By Andrew Hidas

I am gazing across mud flats to a public dock where
a steady procession of fishers and crabbers have spent
the day casting their hooks and nets to the shifting tides.

Faceless and unobserved behind my patio screen,
I see a young couple descend, he fishing,
she in a beach chair thumbing a magazine.

A feathery rain starts falling through diffused yellow light,
the world gone silent and still as the woman turns her chair
into an umbrella under which her lover comes to join her.

It is a scene of such startling and natural intimacy that
I think to avert my eyes, but of course I don’t, can’t,
the moth of my heart drawn to this universal flame.

The lovers barely move over long minutes, and I think of the
fine Latin phrase “in flagrante delicto” as they stand fully clothed,
public and private, open to the world and naked in their cave.

Memories form of lovers care...

Perfect slice half moon,
stark shadows from barren trees
giving way to dawn.

***

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Lovely rendition here of the song that just had to accompany this post…

For periodic and brief posts of inspiring words from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied by the usual lovely photography as exemplified here, see my public Facebook page  at: http://www.facebook.com/TraversingBlog

Twitter: @AndrewHidas

Deep appreciation as always to the photographers:

Rotating banner photos at top of page courtesy of Elizabeth Haslam, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhaslam/

Half-moon photo by redarrow812003, Camerano, Italy,  some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/redarrow/

Tree shadow photo by Örjan Mattsson, Uppsala, Sweden, some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see ...

Just the few of you left now,
your stubborn clinging spent,
a mighty December wind
sending you finally to freefall.

Reclined in the steaming waters,
I see you torn from your branch,
spinning violently, a micro tornado,
coming to rest smack in the middle

of my forehead.

You are small, seven-pronged, maple,
and as you become my third eye,
I look with renewed surprise heavenward,
your cycle now blessed and complete.

***

For periodic and brief posts of inspiring words from the world’s great thinkers and artists, accompanied by lovely photography from my Flickr friends, see my public Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/TraversingBlog

Twitter: @AndrewHidas

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93289242@N07/

Deep appreciation to photographer Elizabeth Haslam for use of the banner photos at the top of this page. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons licensing, see more at: https://www.flickr...