Foggy Dawn
I love these foggy dawns of
spring and early summer:
mornings of limited visibility,
muffled sounds, water
coating every surface.
These are quiet mornings,
made for contemplation,
self-reflection.
I do not need to deeply analyze
to know these are mornings of:
certain limited sadness,
unfulfilled expectations,
intentions set-aside,
uncompleted lives,
lost causes
However, they are mornings of
promise still, if not for me,
then perhaps for you.
Highway 1, Big Sur
Captured, momentary image;
brilliantine setting sun, merged,
melting with the waves.
Bursting kaleidoscope of waves;
upwelling from a distant focal point,
shattered against purple cliffs.
Waves collapse and coalesce,
funneling down a limited horizon,
ending apparent diminution of day.
Prism in eyes spread on air, spray.
spectrumming possibilities layered on;
rainbowed anticipation of another day.
Verbal sharing sometimes only lessens
impact of blurred images on open minds,
naming what should be only softly felt.
Ivy
Seemingly slow crawl of ivy
up the wall belies the rapidity
by which works of man will be
overcome. Ivy insinuates
itself into cracks and crevices
created by natural forces or
errors of man. Regardless,
vegetation eventually wears
down, belittles, breaks the
backs of all that man has built.
The end need not come with
fire or ice, but only by ivy’s
insidious, perseverant creep.
The Last Outpost
Happy Trails –
Yearning for lost heroes from
bygone days of yesteryear,
long since ridden off into
the sunset of youth.
Replaced by icons of the newly-young,
those heroes of the aging-old lie dying,
or dead;
but the laughing is not yet over.
Where are the heroes of yesteryear?
Silver screens of media-mandated
imagination may resurrect them yet,
clothed in alternative realities,
conning the bridges of starships
instead of astride muscled horses.
New heroes to be born another day.
Hi Ho,
And Away.
The Reading
I’ll take a few old poems,
and-razzle-and-dazzle-them,
if I dare to share and they care.
On the road too much this morning,
hyper-dramatizing-my-dharma;
Kerouac caffeineation.
My streams of consciousness are
ebbing-and-overflowing
my banks of subconscious containment.
Say, this could be fun / in the sun / on the run,
etc-etc-and-so-forth;
replenishment for my ego depletion.
What’s more impressive? —
Big Sur by Jack K. or
cover photographs by Allen Ginsberg!
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather be still tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached at rdhartwell@gmail.com.