As Winter Comes

—Poems by JD DeHart, Chattanooga, TN
—Photos by Caschwa, Sacramento, CA

WHAT TO WRITE?

A sudden sonnet
or grocery list?  A poem
about my faith
or a glimpse into abyss?

A fiction story about
a man who wakes to find
he has been changed, or
the true story that shuts
down allegory?

Maybe just the same word
again and again.

Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum 

EVOCATIVE

She knows how to describe
the events in frame
with perfect language, as

delicate as the curve
of a silver ring.  Eye catching
what even trained eyes
have not captured.

Then swinging her censer
noticing across the room,
a clarity of verbal vapor.

FULL ON

the colorful image
strikes panel
to panel

what can you do with
a comic book these days?

ANYTHING

brace hero and chilling
antagonist penciled large
or the simple sweet story
of an ordinary human day.

COMMENTS SECTION

I read a blurb,
nothing more than a written
fart, besmirching the image
above.

Be gone!

This is nothing more
than the bit of thought
clinging to the back
of a stalagmite tooth
of criticism.

A passerby who flings
a word like a pebble then
runs away.  Not even
surveying the damage.

WILDER AND MILDER

crazy hair
without a care

and no the whole thing
won't rhyme.

music man twisting up
in the begging sidewalk

while mild manners walk
by, noses in the air.

BRANCHES

Who knows the sure
weight of loss, the steady
drive of the human
condition?  A thousand voices
every week that cry
for consolation.

This bearded creature,
sagely author, manic
laugher, kind and embracing
soul who sits across from
me.

Rooted in his faith
his branches reach across
the tender shoots, providing
a glimpse of the Father
within finite humanity.

MR.BLANK SLATE

I reached out as kind
coaxing professional twice

but that's ok, never you
mind.

Be the closed door
of the past, uncertain

expression read in at least
two ways.

Still deciding who you
are as winter quickly comes.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

—Roger Ebert

____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to JD DeHart and Caschwa (Carl Bernard Schwartz) for today’s tasty brunch in the Kitchen! JD DeHart writes that he is working on a project at dehartreadingandlitresources.blogspot.com/. Check it out!

 Celebrate Poetry—rhyme and “meter”…
—Photo by Caschwa
And head up to Placerville today, 5pm, for 

Poetry Off-the-Shelves, the poetry read-around 

at the Main Branch of the El Dorado County 

Library. Scroll down to the blue column (under 

the green column at the right) for info about this 

and other upcoming poetry events in our area—

and note that more may be added at the last minute.

Photos in this column can be enlarged by clicking on them once,
then click on the X in the top right corner to come back
to Medusa.