Sunday, August 22, 2021

 In August

 

 

Sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

Illumine and inspire waning armies of blood cells

worn out by attrition beyond years three score and ten

open my eyes to sequences never before given

while I edit them with my fingers

backspacing often with one hand hindered another still spry

chiseling words on a tombstone digitally printed 

taken from writing imaged on a screen

my brother’s name in big bold words

sounding this knell.

 

Illumine and inspire my genes

to signal I’m fit as a fiddle

I’ll make it to eighty uphill

which my brother would have been

 

steady as she goes no need for jazz 

no need for discordancy

just ambling along 

noticing

more than before

except when my eyes turn inward 

into DNA space

where highlights of past life are archived

how is a mystery to me?

 

Illumine and inspire me 

so I can keep making these songs

build me back from your archive better 

than ever I was before 

sing to me muse

as once you sang before.

 

 

 

Dick Russell

August 23rd, 2021

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Ode to the Classics


Knowing their names are not forgotten
            know they were heroes or enemies to some
Let me speak more names
Let me name Borges rhyming with she says
Let the name Bly still be alive
Jeni Couzyn, Barbara Riddle
Lengthening a list that’s left off rhapsodes always left off
So many singers unnamed
Even Homer

Now statues fall and streets are renamed
Let me say Baldwin
Let me say King
Those with passion for speaking the truth

Let
she says
be spoken more
Let Helen tell tales from her own store.



Dick Russell © July, 2020

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Squall


When branches lift their leaves on buoyant air

their leaves upraised as in surrender

it’s clear a wind will blow and then they’ll fall

and droop becalmed before ripples reach them

of a tidal wave of air and quiver

 

as I see my muse shiver in my brain

feeling cold air foretell rain approaching

when her tender embrace will turn away

time turn again and then just as before

calm again aglow in golden sunlight

wrapped in a warm shawl surrounding her smile

waiting for sunset when the storm will come

 

our roof will rattle with ice-spitting rain

falling like grape shot on the bird bath’s pool






Dick Russell

2020

 

 

 

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Democracy




imagine incandescence
pulsing at a distance
a throbbing heart 

a boot on its throat
constraints on its limbs
a knee on its neck
only an ember
its flame will come back





Dick Russell
June 2nd. 2020

Friday, March 20, 2020

Poem for the Equinox

Sunlight before seven and birds begin singing
clear music from a shy thrush deep in the woods
then orderly cadence   a song sparrow's greeting
uproar like a bazaar in orchard and bramble
proud are those song birds with established estates
brave red winged blackbirds riding on hawk's backs
purposeful finches mature in a season

Listen

a quince bush is scratching the window
pollen from pussy willow   daffodil   alder
settles dry and dusty on the skin of her throat
as mallards wedge the lake he moistens her kisses
hands gentle in movement    calloused by fence posts
hard work   molding and smoothing year after year
it's good to plant borage for long honey flow

and people also should sing





©  Dick Russell, 2017
An earlier version was published in Whidbey Island Loon

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