In Edinburgh words matter

Shall I reset the margin of the virtual page?
Will it matter?
Won’t they read on watches phones
exercise machines?
Now I’ve tapped the tune on typewriter keys
will words utter
from muses that kept me from the gutter.
In Edinburgh words matter.

I once couldn’t sleep in the chair I was lent
stumbled around found fish and chips
somehow survived in a poetic miasma.
That was when I first met her
who left me retching in the street
in drunken stupor.

In Edinburgh words matter.

Shall I give safe harbor to thoughts of her
extolling virtues beauty intellect 
how a poet with no income
not a welfare bum
alone with a borrowed car
I’d given mine away 
it might have been.

And she carried a bag big enough to suffice
if she had driven away with me that night 
but the friend’s old car wouldn’t start 
needed a new battery 
had to be pushed to the corner
where an auto-shop would open in the morning
and I'd thrown up in frustration and despair
and said goodnight
and goodbye.

In Edinburgh 1972 where words mattered.


copyright (C) Richard M Russell
            Dick Russell, April 2023

 An Hour Before Sunset

For W. S. Merwin

let me hear you flute your song
follow your notes
to remembered smiles
places lit by winter sunlight
or summer cheer
leave out regret
live just this bliss
when hummingbirds work
red blossom on vines 
forever twining upwards
where there’s blue sky 
but grey clouds billow
whitened edges
gleam in sunlight
what friends would mourn
a man so happy 

after his pipe

He’s gone to another world 
impulsive impatient driven by testosterone
he’s passive meditative thoughtful with 
his muse for she is there to 
enfold him in a world 
where even old
they are young
where minds grow larger while bodies shrink
they’re both on a trip to denial
he to his muse she to her trainer
he does gymnastics with her in mind
she does them with him in the gym


copyright (C) Richard M Russell
           Dick Russell

 tryst

Be lean be mean be vigilant
don’t take the bait
when lust overcomes reason
she’s too much to resist
don’t take the bait
though she smiles
don’t touch
just exchange contact
eye to eye
but not yet a wink
                 
                        

                          Copyright (C) Richard M Russell
                                           Dick Russell

 For Glen Russell - Sign Painter and Wood Carver

There once was a yew tree felled by a storm 
its stumpy roots washed downstream by the flood
from the bank of the glen where it stood firm
till a carver found it looking for wood

who saw in it the shape of a dryad
he liberated so she would swim free
made a woman whose beauty struck all glad
breasting a swirling stream loosed from a tree

that had once shaded a sheltered rock pool
where his muse bathed naked giving delight
now an antique on top of a dresser
glowing with golden tones in the sunlight

time has settled in chiseled grooved ripples

dust's been wiped from bare shoulders neck and face

love tenderly touched her breasts' brown nipples

as she swims forever away with grace.


Richard M Russell (C) Dick Russell
            December 29, 2022

 A December Valentine

Upon you I’ve cast my roving eye
Let me summon the power to step across time 
Turn into a swan you’ll fly from and fall
Faint from a blow from my long neck
On a riverbank pinioned by wings
Just as Yeats described what Erato told him
About Zeus begetting Helen raping Leda 

A swan assaulted you?
You’ll have no proof you were touched
Except these words I’ve sent
You are as beautiful as they

Now long years older
I am still guilty of desire
Zeus is no excuse.

Richard M Russell © Dick Russell
                December, 2022