He said, “You can’t put that here.”
“Watch me,” she replied, and learned
He had the censor’s button.
Category: Poetry
Courage and Corsages
Can’t remember his name
Only the argument
Roses on my wrist
Said he’d paid for dinner
And getting a dance wasn’t
Good
Enough, I walked home alone.
Freshmen year in college is never easy as young adults try to find out what they believe and deal with insecurities. It uses two tools, the acrostic and the line ending in the next line, giving two or three meanings to simple words.
Bards and Poets
Poor, they may have seemed,
overcome with the task of bringing
even-handed news.
The bards of old, the pipers,
reeling from victory or defeat,
yet wrote the lines without fear of rebuke.
Another in this week’s study in Acrostic poetry. I wrote it as a rebuke to the censorship I experienced on a poetry page. They didn’t notice.
Music Lessons
Part of a series of exercises in the use of the Acrostic Poem.
He gave me my first baton.
Endured the fact I knew no theory,
Never lost his temper.
Rigorously teaching the passion of
Young composers with free tickets to see
Conducting Copland, Hanson, Ives.
Soothing nerves as we met our exam, conducting
Minnesota orchestras musicians while
Instilling lessons that gave straight spines and gentle hands.
Those he gave changed lives, the downs, the losses, the ups.
He gave joy, and I, his student remember 41 years later.
My Father Lost His
Engines crossed the yard that day,
Increased business sent the extra engine early,
Got in the way, they said, when they found
Him still alive, steamed between two Great Northerns.
They sent for his wife, drove her to his side,
Youngsters left in Dottie Jean’s hands,
Each shivering from the tales
A round of train folk told, of the pain, of waiting,
Roasting slowly to his death. His little
Son sat on the steps of the speak-easy, waiting
Only his father never came. He cried, to him his
Loving father was a God, immortal, tall, tanned
Dead a week later, the cortège a mile long
Sitting in the front row, scrubbed and clean,
Old timers passed murmuring their sorrow.
Now life would change, penniless, six mouths left unfed.
Acrostic poetry is one of the styles that children learn early in their studies. It gives a framework for a student to get beyond. It gives the stability that lovers of poetry like, that binds them to something in a personal way. The difficulty is to make the poems original. The message that you sent as you mature depends upon word use, punctuation, and the background of the poem. This is a true story of how my grandfather died. I wasn’t there. Dad was eight years old and lost in a sea of loneliness. If it hadn’t been for his oldest sister, and his mother, he would never have found his happy again. It did make for difficult years as he had no role model to rely on as my brothers became teens.
Inner Childhood
As wide-eyed as a toddler’s giggle,
I muddle through the changes
Of Motherhood and Teacher
Learning more than teaching
Loving more than liking
Sharing more than taking
Giving more than Losing
I skin my knees and falling
Find the hands of those
Who parent even when aging
From grandparent to great
I toddle through vast hurtles
Of changing and growing
To keep that sense of wonder
That at 8 I still was knowing.
Declaration Dance
Virginia carried the proposition,
That Adams and Adams spouted
But couldn’t drive through,
That all men are entitled a life
Free from the fetters of kings.
Lee launched the Liberty vote.
Jefferson articulated the leap fantastic
Washington carried its balleted banner
Winter cold and cannon fodder.
Lafayette languished in York,
Out maneuvering the British,
And liberty was born to argument
Of how we should go forward
In this courtly Sarabande and lively jig.
Political Confections
A ribbon of ignorance surrounds
Those suffering Dunning Kruger syndrome,
They laugh and drink deeply
Of their own inadequacies spread
On toasted political muffins.
The chef knows he must deliver
A masterpiece of gullible cakes
Frosted with fanfares of gilded
Sweet sugary confections
Calmly set before a house of cards.
The Union
Unions caught my husband above
The fray where
I was the undercurrent
For his staying.
They held my life above
the ground and
Settled us with a
Future, a pension for
Peace in our white haired days.
Climb
Climb a Mayan Pyramid,
Meet the Jaguar God,
The protector of the family,
The thief of the Sun,
The ender of days,
Beginner of nights.
Feel the cool wind
Arriving from the East,
Bringing the Moon
Protecting the dream
From the Nightmares
Who flee at Dawn.
Climb a Mayan Pyramid,
Meet the Sun,
The divider of days,
The multiplier of one
And zero. A binary god.
A sponsor of sport.
Meet the team, team Jaguar.
They compete with ferocity
To be the companions
Of the Gods. They strive.
They lift the children
To the sun to be seen.
Climb into the past:
Chichen Itza, Dzibanche,
Kohunlich, Tulum.
Where the water
Meets the future,
And the lens is clear
To see into another world.
All photographs and poetry@Ann’s Eyes, by Ann WJ White 2006
Ann WJ White 