Stephen Sutherlin is a designer, poet and musician. He writes poetry about life in the southwest and enjoys metrical lyricism.
Bird song
Gives me
Structure
Rhythm
A call
To hear
Perfect
Numeric
Sequence
Catching
The Po-
ets ear
Please hear
Please hear
Please hear me
Your At-
tention is
Required
Hear ye
Hear ye! Hear
Our songs
To Aw
-aken Your
Desires
Turning the dirt
With Great-Grand-Daddy’s plow
Sharecropper’s till
Real familiar somehow
Making quick work
Of my little garden plot
He’d make an acre
Into food they never bought
Traded with the Osage
When he had a good crop
But it never really seems
Like my efforts pay out full
Maybe this year’s different
Using my ancestral tool
This Old Book*
Born before you
By Sixteen years
Tattered on the
Cover but
Full of Rare
Insights
Beyond its years
Like you.
quinquagenarian
On separate plains
We’ve walked these
Many years while
By my side
Your presence
Felt! A constant
Like the pull
Of True North.
A constant
Companion of
Spirit. Compadre
de una otra madre.
May the Journey
Be but halfway through >>
Cottoncandy salmon over
‘68 Mustang Metallic Blue
Rippling whisps of melon
Streched over Sodalite
Swifting, Lighting,
Darkening, Brightening,
Going, going,
—gone
Fragile
[boxes]
Bounded up
De-coupling—
Social
Distancing—
Uncomfortable
Pauses
As to what
Qualifies
As normal.
Needing
Canned
Laughter
for
Comfort
Food.
I initially started the writing that led to this poem by looking into the actual words that were used.
Fragility — the human condition is exorbitantly weak. We really don’t like that fact.
Boxes — Maria Kondo – put your life into neat little bento boxes— tidy up your life
Mental Boxes — when our emotional chaos is present, we work hard to categorize our responses. Tidy up our minds — but that is usually mental space filled with work and future planning. Very tidy, our future, in our minds, until plans are disrupted by social crisis.
De-coupling — Social Distancing breeds anxiety -especially for extroverts- by hallowing our our group response. When all of a sudden you take away the immediate, physically present, response that we have by being in the same room or the same table — when canned laughter is absent you realize that fake laughter that connects you is better than watching comedy dead pan. A comedian of one is not really that funny. We require social interactivity.
And a news conversation that has to wait for delayed interactions, stops people from answering naturally and responding fluidly.
Yearning
Clamshells
Open slow
With a
Lazy
Yawning
Frond
Unwound
Reaching
Tendrils
Unfurled
Revealing
Future
Colors
Of long
Summer’s Day.
Delicate
The flower
That is man
With age a
Drying crease
Wrinkles cross
Exposing
A grand
Fragility —
A few days
Without more
Water and
Severe
Consequences
Will prevail —
Never to
Hold the same
Shape again
The vase —
Retainer of
remainders
The days count-
ed by fall-
en petals
Beautiful
Unto the
Very last
Though fragrance
Gone and all
Glory past
What remains
Is the same
Shadow’s cast
Through the light
On the sill
Calm and still.
“We want to be
More than the tree.
A melody
For you
We sing and sing
Always hoping
Your Love to ring
As true…
Please, please sing back!
Tell where you’re at —
Let our song
Be for two.”
Lockdown
Quarantine
“Keep the door shut.”
Practice
“Social distancing”
Do not touch!
Wash your
Hands for
Twenty seconds
Swab and
Daub and Wipe
down surfaces!
Don’t forget
Don’t touch
Your Faces!
Though we
Won’t need
No toilet paper
For one
Or two
Weeks more
It doesn’t
really matter
‘Cause there’s none left
At
The
Store