What Those Words May Have Said

A Work in Progress
40

Before they fell like flakes from sculpted stone

words repeatedly hammered and chiseled away 

there’s no detritus at Donal’s feet no substance

no scrap paper in a basket or on the floor

nothing to slip and slide on perhaps to fall

felled by a knock-on effect from ambiguity

a moment when the gripped chisel slips

and un-erased evidence remains

a bust of a President’s head

front lobe exposed

dementia more apparent 

ego expanding beyond all limits 

avarice unchecked

ugh…do not look, do not see, it’s far too ugly

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Clean Coal

they’re carrying clean coal to China

those filthy train cars passing by

once bright green in company colors

now overcoated with coal dust mixed with grime

pollens and pollutants

clean burning coal from Wyoming’s open skies

to brighten China’s murk and gloom

by trains on Burlington Northern’s tracks

as far as Canada’s coal port

a highly automated process

dirty old coal train

we know who owns you

though he stays faraway in Omaha

where the fields are green

and deer roam free

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                    2025

Remembering the Nixon Era

A Work in Progress 
39

So Donal typed this poem up and sent it by U.S. Post

to the Editors of the Workshop Press in faraway U.K.

and soon became a published poet

It was 1970 and he was living in a country 

where four students were killed at Kent State

shot by the National Guard

for protesting the Vietnam War

America, USA

your buttons splay 

rising like antlers of gazelle

your coat dark

like shadow land of jungle

your buttons epitomize furtive deer

your club   impact of a summer without rain

a sidewalk canopy

of a boarded-up store

offers you shade

a shadow 

moving over the rim of sight

distorts your mirage

one hawkish eye

its lid stitched back

watches...

vulnerable to an irritant fly

Oh America

the surgeons removed your tear ducts

you are unable to cry

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025

Donal Got a Job

A Work in Progress
38

So, Donal auditioned got a job in New York.

Bruce Choppin was there, John Hall

The Who performed Tommy at The Filmore East

when Donal lived in Northumberland

at Roughside Bruce visited with Rachel

only a few did that

It was 1969

Gilbert Peaker got mugged on Morningside Heights

having flown to New York from the Lake District

and the Fast Fourier Transform man

John Tukey lay with a bad back

across desks at an IEA (UNESCO) meeting

Forrest Baskett was there from Stanford

Bruce brought together mathematicians     

    statisticians     

           computer scientists 

      Donal 

                            a poet in machine language 

                                    for a mighty

                     machine

               IBM’s 360/91

Forrest said Assembly Language was too low level

impractical for IEA 

                                instead

he would choose FORTRAN

to write programs that involved scoring exam results

of multiple-choice questions marked on cards pre-punched

with the codes for country school and student

collected from all the countries participating in the study

to measure educational attainment at various ages

and that was wise advice from a Silicon Valley savant

but Donal wrote the programs in Assembler anyway

he didn’t know Fortran and there was one particular

subroutine he wrote in Assembler in Sweden 

working with Britt at the Karolinska Institute

where they read all the cards into a special machine

that invoked an Execute instruction that proved useful

Britt said in a postcard later

    Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2025

To the Imagination

A Work in Progress 

37

with Respect to Cole Porter

I’ll not try to say the unsayable

express the inexpressible

write those last few syllables

that clicks it all in place

that thing that memorable measurable thing

that’s inexpressible

that’s unsayable about you

I’ll not try to say that you’re beautiful

overstate the understated you

extol all your good qualities

that made me fall in love

you’re more beautiful each time I see you

I’ll try to find words that will portray you

as you are in present moment

exemplifying truth

but every time I think of him

masquerading as a king

his shadow stands between us and the sun

casts a poor light for lettering

painting in that thing that memorable thing

that’s inexpressible

that’s unsayable about you

Dick Russell © Richard M. Russell

                    2025