Too Old, Too Young

When I'm too old to toil too young to die

I'll write some lines while my brain's still spry

not say in English gone fishing but Greek

a private joke only scholars find wry

Sing to me muses in tongues I can't speak

tone poems in languages I can't name

crystallize images happy or bleak

so my words can attribute blame or fame

Translate your meaning so I get your drift

Let me hear your music framing your chords

picture your meaning in words I can shift

into metrical patterns weaving your words

Sing to me muse with voice universal

each time I recite without rehearsal.

                                            Dick Russell, September 2021

 For Yvonne

 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 23^rd, 2021

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

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