Category Poetry

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...

                 THE EMPTY CLOSET

                   By Andrew Hidas

The suddenly cavernous closet
sprawls in front of me and stops my breath,
as if a street sweeper has barreled through,
and not knowing me from a leaf from a blouse,
has sucked all into its maw, its dark convulsive dark.

A black stain on the door frame
catches my blurred wetting eye
(her coat? her dress? did she have a black dress?)
and I reach to touch it, curious, my head bumping
the now empty hangers, setting them to swinging.

Their echo crumples me.

Half a wall of racks and a long row of
shelves are mine to launch this new life,
and I should weep for the freedom wrought
by their purchase, which I would,
were the price not so colossal and fierce.

“In my beginning is my end,”
wrote a poet more profound than me;
I trust he had it backwards,
and an endless beginning can yet be mine—and hers, too—
beyond hangers s...

THANKS GREAT AND SMALL

By Andrew Hidas

For the Mystery,
the X,
the source of comfort
and question (and cruelty)
and eternal longing and love—

Thanks.

For the leaf flutter,
the ant scurry,
the slant of light on my chair,
this chair, at precisely
5:01 (and 31.6 seconds)
on the afternoon of November 9th,
never seen again through all
the warp and woof of futures unknown—

Thanks.

For these friends
and that food,
the drinks to pair,
the touch of care,
the earth so fair—

Thanks.

For this branch of that tree,
for birds in the air,
a bridge crossing there,
the juice of a pear,
the glint of sun on hair—

Thanks.

For the flesh’s tingle,
(Ooh-uhh-huhh),
for locomotion and
vintner’s potions,
the glory of books,
the gifts of cooks,
all people, this person,
life’s call for immersion—

Thanks, thanks, thanks.

And thanks once more,
It is all in the giving—

Thanks.

***

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            WALKING THE GRAVEYARD

                    By Andrew Hidas

I have taken to walking the graveyard,
An oak-tree’d resting place
Under whose towering limbs
A treasure of autumn leaves and acorns fall.

Strangely soothing, this gliding above the dead,
Pausing to note a name, an age, doing the math,
Adding or subtracting my own advancing years in
A fruitless assessment of my place in line.

Fall’s fierce abiding beauty comes at a price,
Golden everywhere sans the dark abyss where it points,
Each October a plaintive call to arms and attention,
Open arms to love, that is, and attention to time, precious time.

Under every stone, a story of one who breathed, perspired,
Dreamed, questioned, loved, risked—and suffered, of course—
As I suffer when running hard up the hill from the potter’s fields,
Toward the stone monuments of nobles who lie there just as dead.

Breathless, I walk aga...