Some of my Poetry

 I’ve decided to do something a little different with my blog today. Pretty much since I could begin to write and read I have strived to be a writer. The vast majority of my focus and interest has been on narrative fiction (like the fantasy novel I am in the middle of revising) and non-fiction (like this blog). I have dabbled in poetry though, and I am going to share a few of them. I jotted these pieces down on the bus to and from my teaching gig, while going back and forth between looking in my notebook and out the window. Hope that you enjoy them.

* * * 

The cavemen made paintings on their dwellings

of mammoths 

antelopes

fellow cave people 

and their gods.

I wonder if they ever imagined 

that their work would outlive them

and even outlive entire empires 

and be admired by their descendants 

with a completely different culture and level of technology.

Or were the artists of the dawn of time 

simply enjoying making their art

as they struggled to survive?

* * *

The turtle is older than me by decades

and will probably outlive me by hundreds of years.

It has swum in the ocean for several orbits about the Sun

and mothered hundreds of children.

I wonder if the turtle 

ever contemplates her journey.

* * *

I once thought that you were an ocean

but then I discovered that you were a barren desert.

I once thought that you loved me

and would fight on my side,

but then I discovered that you saw me as a grain of sand,

and would cower at the slightest wind.

I thought that you were an asset to my life,

but then I found out 

that I could stand

taller without you.

You are a rusty chain that if it shattered 

I would not shed a single tear,

and finally my wings would grow

and I would fly from a rocky wasteland

that made my bare feet bleed,

towards the Heavens where my body and soul

would grow in boundless strength.

* * *

So many unknowns 

as I walk in the desert

towards the Horizon.

I might trip and fall

on a black rock 

or bruise myself with pebbles.

But I shall follow 

the white doves

as they fly 

towards the stars

and the grey graceful dolphins

as they glide through the seven seas

and I’ll walk 

and swim

and fly

into the Horizon.