June 2015
I have about 200 poems in public in many different places, both online and in print, in several countries from the US and UK, to the Philippines and Malaysia. I often write on natural themes, but recently have been responding to odd prompts. I'm a semi-retired teacher in California.
Index of Western Birds of North America
chickadee : busy circus busy clown
curlew : ice salt reflects clouds
dipper : slippery river drops rock
egret : tall white downy knife
flicker : giant butterfly flash firs
grackle : desert fireworks whining beige
house sparrow : rosy prefers the window
horned lark : dry edge bare road
nightjar : glass lighting candle dusk
phainopepla : dictionary black crested help
pintail : sky quilt sea cover
plover : white behind flashing grass
roadrunner : shaggy honk coated snakes
sapsucker : beggar off boxcars searching
shrike : silent bother lizards warn
titmouse : branches casual cousin visitor
willet : thin legs follow through
wrentit : opposite tiny horizon tetons
-originally published in Experimementos, issue 2, Spring, 2015, p. 18, as edited by joshua szymanowski
The Rules Words Obey
If I could only shape the words
down the page
white space
gaps lines
broken strategically
like severing carbon
into yellow diamonds.
If I could just sculpt poems
like marble: a sculptor takes
his chisel, taps precisely,
chips fly and an arm emerges
pink stone he can stroke
at night
but words melt
ebb away
like a vernal pond drying
as summer warms, smooth
white paper begs for form
but refuses subjugation.
If only I knew the rules
words obey, could teach them
to sit still
to sit up
to dance in circles
arrange themselves artfully
and I would just orchestrate.
I can't find patterns that please
or names of true colors
like clear sky at dusk
blue becoming black
without notice.
These lines remain
unfinished raw
hard-edged indelicate
not at all alive
like a jagged horizon
faint in rising heat
there is nothing soft here
no refinement
I have learned nothing
since yesterday.
Summer Harvest
Errant words, fickle beings here
run about the feet of men
afraid to trespass, like a seer
among the shoots in spring rain
lost verses, orphaned lines abound
scurrying under foot, scatter petals
where they rest on wet ground,
words leached in winter settle
on the frozen fields to wait
for March thaws to steam
them open, buds awake to sate
listeners, verse polished to gleam
hot summer brings new dark furrows
rows of poems combed by harrows
Errant words, fickle beings here
run about the feet of men
afraid to trespass, like a seer
among the shoots in spring rain
lost verses, orphaned lines abound
scurrying under foot, scatter petals
where they rest on wet ground,
words leached in winter settle
on the frozen fields to wait
for March thaws to steam
them open, buds awake to sate
listeners, verse polished to gleam
hot summer brings new dark furrows
rows of poems combed by harrows
©2015 Emily Strauss