A FEW RANDOM POEMS AND BITS OF PROSE:
Aerial Photograph: California Desert Sands
From the sky
evaporation ponds
dissolve into
prehistory
cave painting on
desert landscape
blues and whites
sewn-together shapes
so strange
against the orange and greys
of this artistry
this topography
lead-grey roads
curve round pond
panes of stained glass
clear and exact
nearby mesa rises
like a staircase
only from high
can man be seen
an editor
he is always
erasing and
redrawing
the art
already here
(first appeared in art exhibit at Arts Council for Wyoming County gallery themed "In Flight")
Expressing Triumph
The crows are elusive.
Big, beautiful black birds,
changing their perspective
at just the right moment,
taking to high flight
just
before
the camera flash.
The way they shake their whole bodies
as they "caw"
is amazing as a dog's bark,
or our own speech.
(We have forgotten
to use our body,
to prepare so well
for saying something.)
The crows hold their shiny heads hight,
have every right
to sit on roof, porch, or table...
Who will tell them what to do?!
For they know how to "caw" in return;
they, with their intentions
solidly in place
will win every argument.
Mourning at Moose River
black peninsulas
of perilous water rippling on
powder white river
(first appeared in 2010 anthology Le Mot Juste)
Grass-cakes
bake
in Monday sun.
November Divergences
With knotted hair
and rosy cheeks thawing cheeks,
we sit by Iron Maiden’s guitar
at a pretentious, highfalutin
Hard Rock Café
in Niagara Falls.
November is here, even inside.
Tilty table, wet floor and
voices’ roars
make us feel at home;
lots of talking mouths
with food in them.
The satisfaction
of friends makes its mark.
Outside, we find
freshly fallen
Ginko leaves
and a cold, open sky
beckoning possibility
to come near.
Pleading, please.
Gum like sealing wax
makes its mark
on ground or wall,
little bottle caps stare at us
from under tinted water
where shiny pennies used to be.
Beyond the little blemishes,
another mark:
a man on a monument
stands tall,
witnessing to us of
Yugoslavia’s Independence.
Tourist children
are children of the gulls, to me,
as they flap around noisily
in shirts of white and
can’t quite
leave the ground.
What are their marks?
Across the park
a deep tablet of slate,
from the blue mountains
in far-off Wales,
reads that in this place—1 Sept. 1929
was held the first Welsh
hymn singing festival.
Here the windward songs
of millions come and gone
now echo back.
A Ginko leaf lands on my arm
and I have found my gold,
a little treasure in the breeze,
something in this world for free.
This gold
deflects all our ugliness.
Dandelion Wishes
If I float little
dandelion tops,
will they stay:
gold coins
in the
greatest fountain?
I see now it is the wishing,
not the getting,
that is a lovely time...
the taking time
to want
that pays.
Like a child who has never seen the ocean
thinks he knows its sound,
from ear to shell,
to guess at what love is--
to look for it-- is to grasp at hell.
Plain Sight
The shabby boat moves
over the water slowly,
a sentinel,
a shape-shifting soul.
Sometimes we see a shadow,
or a shiny ship-ly object,
sometimes a plain old boat.
A soul, and sometimes a poem.
can not be explained.
The Tendency to Roll
Planets, on their invisible axes.
Waves, baseballs, any spheres
can't sit still unless held.
Hips, in the pulse of melodic sound.
Fields, hills, valleys,
garbage in the streets,
roll like marbles under my feet.
Humans, down the easier route.
Pebbles, in a brook,
tumble like acrobats in loop-de-loop.
Thunder's growl.
Eyes soooo easily roll.
Logs in a river,
black walnuts on a hill.
Stones, water in a pan.
Children in the grass.
It is no wonder
we mostly choose
to move ourselves
on wheels, so we think
we are rolling somewhere,
not held, but on the loose.
Fisher Man
October 2008
Worms in the parking lot at my new job remind me of you. You, hunched over in my high school parking lot, scanning the wet dark pavement for worms, gathering them one by one, gently placing them into whatever small plastic container happened to be in the car at the time.
I slumped deep into my seat in the family car, burying my four-eyed face in my long stringy hair and floppy sweater. Your little critters rode back to our house, container cradled in your strong hands, intended for our crowded family-of-six refrigerator, that is until your next fishing trip. I no longer cringe; now I smile.
Two weeks ago, I turned thirty-three. At surprising times, without effort, I see flashes of my teen years. Like that little worm on the line (or big, fat, juicy… if you got your way), it only takes some small detail to “fish” a memory out of the dark abyss, the endless stacks of information in my head.
Already, I have trouble accessing; when I am your age, I’ll be in big trouble. Why is it when I want to recall something the fish are not “biting”? Some of it, I’ve totally forgotten: all my teachers, my old addresses, even short-term friends. I forget a name, but never a face. What will go next?
You, the Fisher Man, to me, didn’t fish this year. A license costs too much. You brush it off as no big deal. Sickness also kept you far from your favorite fishing holes. You are better now, but the season is long gone. I would have bought you the license, but life got in the way.
A part of me wants to pick up these wiggly creatures, save them for you, make sure you fish again. But I know really that is up to you. The worms will wait for you, or maybe their descendants will. And I will always wait for you, but these days my face is not buried.
The Other Food Chain
In a major city, concrete pillows were cast and laid around the city,
aiming to create awareness for the plight of the homeless.
The plankton of hope keeps
every little one of us massively eager,
even those with hard dreams
who sleep on the streets
and eat nothing but
the tiny bits of life floating
in the air.-- There are
certain syllables they will hold dear.
"Honey, stay with me."
(The mother to her child:
Eternal words that
circle when no one is around.)
"You are so silly."
(How lover simply grinned
at loved like he might never again.)
"Come on, don't say that; it's mean."
(The friend to friend who is
rudely pointing at a man.)
These are the meager fragments
of humanity, that represent hope
when all hope is gone.--
To the homeless man
who carves his art into
the wooden bench he shadows,
or sometimes into his own hand,
relief is never an option:
His concrete pillow
under buggy lights is
not a sentence so much as
just being.
Fed sometimes by loose change,
necessary bits of food,
but best of all
by words not meant for him
set free to feed more than one mind
if he be listening.
A smile
is all that he can pay,
but he will pay it well.
Will you look
to see him smile?
T. F. Rice's aim with much of her writing is to encourage creativity, especially in the lives of our children. Pushing my kids to be creative is great because I feel like it is a small victory, something they don't fight me on!
-Anonymous Reader
[Rice's "The Other Herald"] is like a big box of Godiva chocolates. When I open the box which piece do I want to savor first, my eyes scan the choices and they all look delicious. But, with the newspaper I can enjoy each morsel many times, they are fulfilling and they aren't fattening!!!"
-Joan Herrmann, Longtime Reader
