Moments - Poetry for Everybody

Poetry that is readily understandable finding beauty, wonder, hope, and happiness in the everyday. Approach the anticipation of spring finally returning after the long winter. Experience the joy of boys playing in the mud or the beauty of a new snowfall. Feel the stories of ancient bones and listen to the quiet of the early morning. Hear the reminiscence of the passing of time and see the excitement of each passing scene in a life. These and many more.

Review by: P.S. Rowland on May 01, 2014 :      
When reading a book, did you ever get the feeling the author could see right inside your brain and was putting down your thoughts and not theirs? Author Greg Schroeder, has done just this in this recent gem "Moments". Thank you for the memories you have invoked, the thoughts you have inspired and the memories yet to come as I read your words over and over again!

Author P.S. Rowland of "Lest We Forget Life's Passion"

From Moments:

Infinity

Clear and cold

The winter night sky reaches

To the edge of time

And space.

Brilliant full moon floods

A pale, thin light

But fails to illuminate

The blackness above.

Stars, tiny pinpricks:

Yellow, red, white, blue

Mixed in color and intensity,

Serve as markers through

Distance and time.

Sitting on the hill

Icy wind buffets

Lost in the depths

Of space and time

Lost in the imagining,

Imagining the infinite,

And the possibilities

That grow from it.

Guest Review - Transitions

Today, I am very pleased to share Dr. Sheri Lindner's review of my most recent short collection of poetry. I have been privileged to make Dr. Lindner's acquaintance at poetry readings on Long Island.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Schroeder’s book of poems, Transitions, catalogues many types of transitions—those that occur in nature, in the growing up of a child, in the parent-child relationship, and in the shifting perspective of the author.  In each of these types of transitions, Schroeder reflects facets that sometimes stand in opposition to one another.  A poem describing the destructiveness of Storm Sandy is juxtaposed with one detailing the almost unnoticed shift of summer into fall.  Wistfulness of one season’s ending is off-set by eager anticipation of the next season’s appearance.  The  parental desire to protect is counterbalanced by the parental desire for one’s child to be able to bear the knocks that might come his way.  Schroeder’s impulse is always to pull us beyond the focused worries that consume us and out into the world where beauty and significance exist.  He never belittles one over the other, but holds both in tension, understanding that that is the real reflection of our lives.  This is captured most exquisitely in the lines from his poem “Winter Dusk”:  “Grim gray clouds streak by in tatters/a few brown birds snag what matters.”

                                                                         -Sheri Lindner, Ph.D.

                                                                Author of Opening Eden’s Gate

Transitions is available at Smashwords.com for $0.99 for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and many other formats.

Dr. Sheri Lindner, a former teacher of English, is currently a clinical psychologist, and is also a poet and essayist interested in the processes of development and maturation as they are reflected in Biblical stories and children’s literature.  Her writings have appeared in Jewish Currents, The Reconstructionist, Reconstructionism Today, Kerem, Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Poetica, Performance Poets Association Literary Review, Matzoh Ball Soup, Soul-Lit, The Ritual Well, and The New York Times. Dr. Lindner was awarded First Place in the 2013 Nassau County Poet Laureate Society poetry contest for her poem "Return." Opening Eden's Gate is available on Amazon.

Midsummer Poetry Night

If anybody is on Long Island next week...

One from me:

Boys

Springtime and it is raining

Not hard

But enough to be wet

And for the mud to BE

Without being too much.

I run over the wet grass

Then dive

For the dipping frisbee

Skittering along full out

Acquiring a thin skin of mud

A splotch dots my cheek

Just right

A badge of honor without

Needing to taste it

Or wipe any off my face

Hours later, blue from cold

Soaked through

Mom will make me stop

Just inside the front door

To remove all I've gained

I'll smile an inward smile

Shivering

And shed the outward banner

But keep the inner pride

Having done so very well

In the mud and rain there is

Much more,

Than winning and losing the game

A separate score, unmentioned

Total mud and water accumulated

 

Haiku for Spring

Spring has finally sprung here in New York. Some structured word pictures of the scenes and emotions of spring. Any and all comments appreciated and welcome!

Tiny wren flitters
Singing inside the bushes
Happy to see spring

Crocuses poke through
Stubborn edges of grey snow
Heralding warm days

The sky seems lighter
The wind and rain seem softer
As the days lengthen

Reverie broken
By sudden northern cold snaps
Which soon moderate

Bright morning, dry, clear
Afternoon showers, quick, wet
Then dry cool evening

Lark greets early dawn
Excited, singing brightly
Exalting the spring

Dove mourns passing night
As sun rises promising
Warmth, growth, spring flowers


Also check out Haiku Hoopla for interviews and samplings from established haiku poets.

Spring Poems

The geraniums (and a lone kalanchoe) were my winter gardening project. Enjoy the poems. Leave a comment on your emotions with the arrival, sometimes with clinging tendrils of winter, of the spring season.

Spring is Coming

This morning I went out
To fetch the paper by the road
And greeting me
High in a tree
Was a cardinal
All decked in red.
He sang to me
That sunny morn
Of coming spring
Warm and bright
Of crocuses coming
Through melting snow.
When his song was done
Another voice came lifting
The whippoorwill was
Down the street.
Wip-poor-poor-will
Came the call,
Greet the day now dawning
Heed the cardinal
The snow is going
Spring is soon arriving!

Spring Not Yet

The spring dark descends quickly

Bringing a breeze that will be warm

When the summer arrives but now

Is cool, almost cold, reflecting

Winter just recently receded.

The day was bright but likewise

Cooler than the sunlight suggested,

With puffy cumulus first bunching

Then separating, tantalizing.

Even the trees and bushes tease.

One imagines the buds bursting

Into the sunlight, only to be

Disappointed on closer inspection.

Soon, but not yet.

 

Spring Sky

Spring has come;

There are buds on the lilacs

The sun no longer is its weak

Winter self.

But the sky, the sky

This spring night

Harkens back to the winter.

Cold air gives a sharpness

The scarcity of clouds

An open vista

To thousands, nay, millions

Of tiny twinkling pinpricks.

 

Sandy (and no power, heat, light) - We Ain't Gonna Miss Ya!

I was ten days without power and heat in the "superStorm" aftermath. I know people still out and people who lost everything, swept away in the storm surge or smashed by trees falling or uprooted. It is oft said but intimately observed in the past two weeks by me personally, that trying times bring out both the best and the worst in people.

The below, in chronological order, are personal poetic snapshots. Hopefully we all learn a little from this and avoid the severity in the future.

Hurricane Sandy

 

The wind rolls up in waves.
The roar starts out low and builds
Whipping the trees and bushes
Into a frenzy as it peaks and lingers
The suddenly fades away
Only to begin the cycle anew.

The frenzy starts with a gentle swaying

Back and forth in one dimension
Then, as the wave crests, spreads
To every direction in a madcap dance,
Only to fade to a stiff quivering
As the wave of air recedes.

The sound is my favorite;

It encompasses the whole –
The muffled beginning,
The rapid build-up,
The climactic crescendo,
The equally rapid decline.

Then there is the presence of danger

At the peak, the frenzy’s max,
Will the branches or trunks snap
In the incredible frenetic dance
Or will they recover to face the next
Burst and dance once more?

 

Waiting It Out

Motors thrum a steady background beat

While inside no dance, no light, no heat.
Hurricane’s come and done her worst
Recovering slowly, we’re not the first.
For a few it was deadly, for others, total loss
For most inconvenience, disruption, emotional cost
And now the recovery, unknown progress
Waiting’s the worst of it, can’t trust the press.
Lines for blocks at the rumor of gas
The kindness of strangers, the rude horse’s ass
The best and the worst in a person comes out
You see it all when you’re out and about.
Not worth crying over; falling into a pout.
Move on, make the best of it, this too shall pass.
Nothing worth fighting over, don’t bring out your brass;
It’s a difficult time for all, remember the worst off
When you complain you have it so tough.
No cable TV, or internet? Some people still sit
Buried under blankets, cold meals, lights unlit.
Linesmen working overtime; many from far away
The fault is not theirs, working day after day.
Maybe the execs, and the big utility boards,
Should have planned better, or fall on their swords.
But for the individual, caught in the mess
Do your best, know your limits, pass the test
By making it through, staying healthy and sane
Good, solid decisions, despite the annoying pain.

 

Stupid Is

The gas! The gas! It will never return!

Race to the station.
Wait on the line, engine idling,
For hours.
Just to top off the tank.
Because it may be
The last
Gas
On Long Island!
Or not.
Every day
More power to the stations,
More tankers to the terminals,
Trucks delivering more every day.

Another storm is bearing down!

It will bring devastation
And the end of the world!
Or at least
More outages
And shortages
And hardship.
Or not.
This one’s just a regular storm
Like hundreds of previous storms.
Nothing special except
In the minds
Of the media
And the cold and the homeless
And the tired.

 

Myths and Gods
 
The storm had passed
Leaving loss and waste
And a darkness, black
Against which stand back
The stars in bright relief.
You feel the Greek belief
In their myths and their gods
Without our technical clods.
Closer to the best of nature
Even in the midst of disaster.

 

Haiku 32

 
Trunks smashed and splintered
Wires tangled and twisted and down
Awaiting repair
 

Haiku 33

Small warbler singing

Jumble of uprooted tree
Recovery begins

 

Memento

 

A child wandered through the devastation
Her mother holding her hand at a sharp elevation
She wanted to know why so many trees fell
And why the garbage had such a terrible smell
Then she found a thin, long, bare-branched bough
And fancied it her memory of the great event
She snatched it up and dragged it home, a moment;
Captured in the object, cast aside by the storm
Summing up her loss and confusion and scorn.
Because it had been fun and terrifying and awesome
And Mommy and Daddy never let the gruesome
Protrude into the excitement and questioning
And so the branch was her silent mentioning
Bare like the shelves when batteries they seek
Thin like the keening of the wind at the peak
And branched like the rest of her life.

 

Nor'easter After

Snow falls in dangerous beauty
On the fragile survivors.
Sharp winter in soft white clarity
Missed in the misery of "others".

The 47 percent and the 1 percent
Lost in the powerless 30 percent.
Gas lines and travel, psychotic breaks
With gentle, pretty, hexagonal flakes.

It is said, this too will pass
If you survive, you will be stronger
But while the snow is falling fast
Please make the dark be no longer!