2024, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, sonnet, spring, the no-scape

honeysuckle choke

on the backporch listening to the rain
drinking coffee hiding behind
a holly and honeysuckle wall. Monday
and I’m off work. plodding away
between sips at my translations of bird song

the image of the yard overrun in honeysuckle
makes me smile. invasive and beautiful
as quiet piano music, expansive as kudzu
on Pine Mountain, ever-present as my neighbors
smoking their late morning weed

like gunshots after sunset in the Spring
(keep them property values down, boys!)
let honeysuckle choke out the sirens, too
let breathe and sip, the dogs and me don’t care

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2024, Days, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poetry Month, river life, sonnet, the no-scape

Day 46 and 47, 2024

Day 46 (51st birthday sonnet)

for a day, the machine becomes a man
repaired repurposed for the moment
at rest. some old floppy disc memory
plays back a slower program: RUN
by facsimilating relaxation
there is no knowledge of the wharf
all rhythm follows the common time
patter of the dogs. yes the weather’s warm

but there is no majesty in it just a program
booted up. my eyes blue like old computer screens
take in the unscripted code generated
identifying the silence of moments
between sunrise and the arrival
of the system update in your smile.

Day 47

wharf wannabe triatheles
return with warm weather:

rumors of the season
already rolling: my imagination

turns to visions of fire
to the smell of diesel of oil

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2024, Days, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, sonnet, the no-scape, winter, Working Class Literature

Day 33, 2024

rivers stacked upon rivers
this world these worlds
flood sometimes we
float or sink sometimes

they leave their beds
spread out over the wharf
spread out drown cities
sometimes dried out

like expired raisins
concrete deserts swallowed
rivers stacked upon rivers
push sometimes unforgiving currents

then go back to bed to bed
leave a world rewrit in mud
the old world a foundation
a collective dream… sometimes

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