THREE POEMS
JUST WONDERING
Summerland, CA.
February 17, 2017
Is there a place
where streets have no names,
where they begin in clouds
and end in thick green forests
with pungent odors of ancient beasts?
with pungent odors of ancient beasts?
Is there a strange land
where rain falls up from the
earth
and soaks the sky
with moist musings on the
stars?
Or, perhaps, an invisible
land where
birds beat with flying have
gills to glide into the sea,
and fish fed up with swimming
have wings to wheel above the
clouds?
Is there a nowhere land
where fish-birds, taking in
greedy gulps of air,
and bird-fish, beaks moist
with foam,
sing old fish songs from the
cities beneath the sea.
EARLY SUMMER MORNINGS
Reading Mary Oliver’s book, Long Life
Was
it ever necessary to be so quiet,
to
dress in the quarter light of those early summer mornings,
to
creep toward the door and unlatch it ever so slowly,
and
close it without waking the sleepers in the house?
So
young to become as if a thief or a phantom.
But
to what end?
Was
it the dreaming world just rousing itself from sleep ,
to
dress itself in arranged and familiar patterns,
so
easily passed over, as if they were always there,
concealing
its daily rituals of new beginnings?
Each
dawn a wonder for one who might witness
the
charms of the world displaying itself—
when the trees might still
decide not to be perfectly upright
and still that morning, but
to wander as a shadow into the grassy green fields, or the light might choose
to live that day
as a wish of being ripples of
water dancing with the wind--
Rows
of black ants moving to some inaudible tune,
descending
and emerging from the dark caverns of earth--
Holy
Mysteries!
A
sly wink of the eye of God!
BEING ELEMENTAL
Asheville, N. Carolina
April 29, 2015
It was only a quick glance
From the road I was
travelling
Toward the porch where a
black man in a vivid blue shirt,
Flashing like a signal, was standing
Flashing like a signal, was standing
Straight, still, he could
have been a statue.
But he was a man, who,
looking at nothing,
Was becoming the sweet smell
of the morning Carolina air,
Or maybe the first drops of a
soft rain falling on his fields.
A brief punctuation in the
stream of passing moments!
A thimble cup of grace
pouring into the world!
A silent blessing!
Quite enough for a day.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert D. Romanyshyn is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Leaning Toward the Poet: Eavesdropping on the Poetry of Everyday Life, was published in 2014. A multi media work, it contains drawings of some of the epiphanies that arise where, while lingering in the shadows, and when, in the company of the poets, the splendor of the simple moment, the miracle in the mundane, and the wonder of stray lines display themselves. He is currently completing a detective novel, The Frankenstein Prophecies: The Untold Tale in Mary Shelley’s Story/Nine Questions and Replies.
VISIT ROBERT AT
http://robertromanyshyn.com/RECENT BOOK
Leaning Toward the Poet: Eavesdropping on the Poetry of Everyday Life
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