Turning Point

 

There’s a point where you set your course
   with a compass rose and turn a corner

reach for a long last leg of your journey

   hoping a favorable wind will blow

you’ll make it through winter into spring

   then succumb to sudden frost snow falling

on daffodil stems succulent still

   though chilled erect while drooping wet

you’ll come ashore in time for cherries

   strawberries blueberries beans

when winter’s done summer will come

   even though a blizzard blow and sudden snow

Dick Russell

copyright (C) 2019, 2022

Four Sonnets for the Price of None

Four Sonnets for the Price of None

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

 

Tell me some tales you never told before

Tell what the future may take from its store

To challenge every species to find

a way forward preserving its own kind

 

From one day’s generation to the next

sunrise to sunset moonrise to moonset

high tide low tide morning and evening

never knowing what the future may bring

 

Some more sentient others much more dumb

some with levity cavalier hamstrung

by prejudice innate humor heartless

original sin anything worthless

 

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

 

Now make me bolder now make me stronger

Let me be ready to face a danger

No more will they swarm ashore from longboats

Swing axes instead cyber taunts they’ll boast

 

That some will heed and flock to their standard

While others will know they still attack hard

With bitter messages sweetened but deadly still

Crippling minds with hate for which there’s no pill

 

And all along coal trains keep going by

Are there contracts that say we must supply

Wyoming coal to our friends in China

Whose cyber spies bug our candelabra?

 

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

 

Let me project my voice through time

Never let me struggle to find a rhyme

Or fill a line with requisite meter

Choosing my own form from time to time

 

Trampling iambic feet with anapests

Spontaneously spiking a spondee

Into the dactyl hexameter drone

And making it squeak with dubbed track of glee

 

Canned laughter cued on demand by a script

Written in the latest language fashion

Launched to the cloud from nondescript notebooks

Noticed by no one except by the swarm

 

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Richard M. (Dick) Russell 

© January 2022

 

Lament for Jean

 

      What I Liked About Rex

      He devised the airlift that fed Berlin  

      There’s now a street   Rex Waite Straße  in his honor  

      Wing Commander Reginald Waite

      What I liked about Rex was his quiet manner

      his interest in archeology

      he’d flown biplanes over Mesopotamia

      over England’s shires

      noting old pathways

      meandering routes unseen at ground level

      how such paths came together
      at places often sacred

                         places once pagan 

      but whatever culture's there

      still performs its rites

      Rex had an ease with authority about him

      as when he got me to help him

      re-install wooden shutters

      one fine late Autumn day

      shutters that winterized French windows

      opening out onto the lawn at Foyers

     where New Forest ponies sometimes grazed

      such a fine day it was

      with the breeze lifting fallen leaves

      into a momentary vortex

      as  dry leaves spiraled up into a helix

      then fell back to the patio as calm prevailed

      there were no dark clouds in the sky

      except his good Lady

      who hated onset of winter

      Foyers where ponies brought their foals

      geese pecked at fallen quince

      wood was stacked by the front door

      ready for winter fires

      was Foyers such a place where old paths met?

      it seemed actors   actresses   often stayed there

      while playing Southampton Rep

      & poets came and went

      never paying rent

      © Dick Russell, 2013, 2016

 December 15th 2021