Category: American Place

These are poems that aim at reflecting something uniquely American in experience. Be it a place. Or a person or an experience. It had to happen somewhere to become something.

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2021 American Place Hawaii Poems

OCTOGENARIAN

Judy Su

No one would ever guess
How many years you have spent
Making this world a better place
3.2 Generations, 8 Decades
3 Children, Now 5…4 Grandchildren
Now grown, who would have known
That this beauty of indeterminable age
Is as wise as a sage
With so many years under her scarf
You can not count them like the larks
Whose happy songs fill the morning air!
And oh, she sings with a voice as sweet
As honeysuckle dew pulled from
Flowery trumpets and rejoices like
A chorus of morning birds who
Awaken the spirit as the golden light
Opens upon a new day. This day,
29,200 days since your birth
Into a world just shaken days before by the
Bombs of Pearl Harbor and the tides of war
To this day where we climb
Up green hills of Waimea and
Celebrate Hawaiian Adventures among the canyons.
To this day where we celebrate you,
Judy Su. Our matron, our mother, our grandmother.
Originator of our generation – Impetus of our growth
Nurturer of tearful eyes and bloodied knees
Who cared and repaired and brought us back to our feet
So that the adventure could go on and
We could be made strong to face the world
That is brightened by your presence
As we enjoy the sunset and listen to the waves
Bringing in the hopes of a new day.

Categories
2021 American Place Garden Psalms New Mexico Poems

Seasoning

The seasons are changing
The frost is coming
To bring its crystal blanket
And cover the ground with winter
Turning everything brown and
Changing summer’s growth
Into next spring’s compost
It looks as though
It is laying waste
Desolating everything in its path
But with every cycle
Destruction breeds creation
We must not despair
For a withered stalk
Makes food for the next
Wiley buds
Of spring

Categories
2021 American Place Poems

Fossils

Your time has passed
What you have to say
Is no longer relevant
You are The Abuser
Whose last punch
Became enlightenment
For The Abused.
All your power has gone out
No longer are you in control.
We have transcended
Your influence and
This is why you
Are afraid!
With each generation
Your hold on the foundation
Has faltered, slipping…
As your last gasp leads
To a flailing, leaves
You falling off the cliff
Of this civilization
Into the cold waters
Of the past
A fossil – like the statues
Of the oppressors that
Have been torn from the
Town square and
Hurled into the abyss.
A watery wasteland
A stone garden
One last monument to your hate…
Now asleep,
Forever!

Categories
2021 American Place New Mexico Poems

Lunar Landing

Chaco

Chaco, Chaco
Pueblo, pueblo
Solar and lunar
Casting shadow
Crossed perfect symmetry
Over generations
Passing down
Great calculations
To one day build
A night full of houses
That track the Sun
As it falls and rises
To follow the Moon
As it waxes and wanes
Over eighteen years
Of coming and goings
Houses full of empty rooms
For ghostly guests
Not even tombs
For no body rests
In the broken vessels
Of offerings made
To the ancestors travels
North to South
Down roads that unravel
After countless miles
Chaco, Chaco
Pueblo, pueblo
The presence of The Peoples
Persists through the morrows

Categories
2021 American Place New Mexico Poems

Night Sky

Night Sky

I look up
Into the night sky
Looking back into
The history of the universe
This mystery I see
A thousand stars
And clouds of dust
Presented to me
From long, long ago
And just a fragment
Not even a whole
Arm of the galaxy
For it unfolds
Well beyond the sky
That sits on the horizon
Before my small eye
A dizzying array
In the dark, dark desert
This bright reminder
Of how dark and small
I am
On this ball of dust
And water
Spinning out into an eternity
Of history
With the possibility that
Empires are falling
Before my eyes like
Stars caught in the greater
Gravity of a singularity

Categories
2021 American Place New Mexico Poems

The Prize Undone

Rainbow trout

Ignoble afternoon–
A beautiful day full
Of Unproductive adventure
A morning of attempts
Seen successful by
Others all around us
Empty handed we returned
To the road in search of
Vivacious waters
One last stop at
At the end of our journey–
–A great discovery
This riverbed full
Of our treasures
Great swimmers in abundance
And then great luck
A catch, a beauty
Long and strong, shimmering
With its rainbow skin
A triumph for the picture book
–Alas, against the rules
We had taken what we can’t keep
But greed made for bad decisions
And before I had enlightenment
The light went out of its eyes
There was death in the water
A waste of a noble creature
Now fish food — We must listen
To our children, their
Natural moral instincts
Are better than our
Ignoble age.

Categories
2021 Albuquerque American Place New Mexico Poems

End of Summer

End of Summer

A walk in the foothills
At the end of summer
Still very warm with
A hint of coolness in the breeze
Roasting a landscape full of seed
Getting ready for winter winds
To scatter the next generation
Of thistle and sage across the plain
Cottonballs full of flight-ready potential

Starburst purple Asters and little
Fucsia-colored clusters line the dry dirt and sand
While hundreds of pale blue Dragon Flies
Do helicopter fly-bys filling
The air with their hyper activity
Butterflies big and small match
The colors of the coming fall
And set my mind free
To fly with them on the breeze.

Categories
2021 American Place New Mexico Poems

By The Lake

As I sit here by my fire
And the morning turns to day
The fish we caught
Is made a meal
But we no longer can stay
For time is short
Out in the woods
As time is short
Out in this world
These simple things
That we enjoy
Don’t last too long
Once they’ve unfurled
Yet these moments make
Great treasure
And some may get written down
Yes, out here we take real pleasure
In the scene, the set, the sounds
But, out here there are no actors
Only characters pure and true
To this theater we take for granted in
These places where they do what they will do.

Categories
2021 American Place New Mexico Poems

Ripples Through Time

Ripples In Time

I sit in my canoe
Thinking of you
My Mentor
My teacher
A man drifting in calm
Waters of the present
Looking across the ripples
Of the past.
You taught me the blessings
Of Smoke
Steaming Cedar branches
And Sweat
You taught me how to return
To our Mother
Hold her sacred
Center
and
Still
Oneself as the
Ghosts of the Buffalo
Silently graze on by
As shimmering ancestors
Follow
Singing their stories
To you
Creating a new narrative
That will ripple
Out into the Future–
For nothing created
Is ever truly destroyed.

Categories
2021 American Place Bird Song New Mexico Poems Road Less Travelled

Last Hoorah

One last hoorah
Before The Spirit of Summer
Succumbs to the seriousness
Of Education and Work
That signals the American
Tradition of Fall
That seems to come earlier
And earlier each year
As administrative minds
Decide for the masses
That the excess of
Time and energy is the
Corruption of Mind and Learning —
So into the woods we’ve run
With cedar and river
And Freedom and Fun
To learn the bird’s songs
One last time and throw
Our poles to lure one last
Meal from the waters
The lessons of the wild
Provide the mild mind
With relaxation and realization
That a simpler life may be
Required to grasp the enlightenment
That a generation sought there
Generations back as they fought
To find what lacked in their daily life.