May 2016
Michael L. Newell
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com
I have lived approximately one third of my life outside my home country of the United States. I have been, among other things, a teacher, a professional stage actor, a federal bureaucrat, and a life long nomad, even here in the states. My work has recently appeared in, among other places, The Lilliput Review, Ship of Fools, The Iconoclast, and Jerry Jazz Musician. After a 27 year career as a secondary school English teacher, twenty of which were spent abroad, I retired to coastal Oregon 21 months ago where I lead a quiet life which includes walking several miles most days. I have had many books and chapbooks published, none of which are still in print. The most recent book, Traveling without Compass or Map, was published in 2006 by Bellowing Ark Press.
Author's Note: Long Gores is an estate comprised of approximately eighty acres of marshland in the Norfolk Broads just outside Norwich, England. I spent the summer of 1998 in a Victorian cottage located on the estate. This sojourn produced a forty-one page poetry chapbook from which these poems are drawn.
The Garden at Long Gores
A commonwealth of birds, butterflies, bees,
flies, and other insects large and small,
populates the garden, an exuberant preserve
of flowers, bushes, trees, and stony paths
where cats, dogs, sheep, and an occasional person
wander through without having
to display a visitor's visa.
The industrial life of insects continues
unabated, undisturbed by tourists.
Plants, flowers, bushes, and trees
cycle through beauty, decay,
and rebirth, generation upon generation.
Rain, sun, and wind compel attention
from all living within the boundaries
of this small, bursting at the seams, republic.
To Praise in English
The flowers, red,
orange, were aristocrats
of the garden,
and wanting
to honor them by
using their names,
I asked how
they were called.
The answer was
long and Latinate,
regal but without
connection to the
world where they
gravely lent grace
and elegance. So
I call them
flowers, a simple
word which categorizes
a wildly disparate
family, but a
word which implies,
even in its
humblest instances, some
measure of beauty.
In this example
blood and sun
filled the garden.
Generation
Each flower which blooms,
a thought fully formed;
each one fallen
decays into mulch
for future shoots and
buds: the burning rose,
the intoxicating honeysuckle, the
lily sprouting from lips—
all will recede into
what feeds the future.
The Theatre of Plant Life
Flowers bloom, an opening
gregarious and optimistic,
peak into an
exuberant exhibitionism,
wither into
a mockery
of past glory,
mutely pleading for attention--
former stars in ragged
dinner dress.
Unremarked, they fall
to earth,
decay into material
which will redress beauty.
Her Hand
lifts and unfolds
on to a shoulder,
an elegant
unfurling, a blossoming
into touch, petal
light, which will be
felt long
after its removal.
All five poems were first published in The Long Gores Suite (Lockout Press, 2002).
The Garden at Long Gores
A commonwealth of birds, butterflies, bees,
flies, and other insects large and small,
populates the garden, an exuberant preserve
of flowers, bushes, trees, and stony paths
where cats, dogs, sheep, and an occasional person
wander through without having
to display a visitor's visa.
The industrial life of insects continues
unabated, undisturbed by tourists.
Plants, flowers, bushes, and trees
cycle through beauty, decay,
and rebirth, generation upon generation.
Rain, sun, and wind compel attention
from all living within the boundaries
of this small, bursting at the seams, republic.
To Praise in English
The flowers, red,
orange, were aristocrats
of the garden,
and wanting
to honor them by
using their names,
I asked how
they were called.
The answer was
long and Latinate,
regal but without
connection to the
world where they
gravely lent grace
and elegance. So
I call them
flowers, a simple
word which categorizes
a wildly disparate
family, but a
word which implies,
even in its
humblest instances, some
measure of beauty.
In this example
blood and sun
filled the garden.
Generation
Each flower which blooms,
a thought fully formed;
each one fallen
decays into mulch
for future shoots and
buds: the burning rose,
the intoxicating honeysuckle, the
lily sprouting from lips—
all will recede into
what feeds the future.
The Theatre of Plant Life
Flowers bloom, an opening
gregarious and optimistic,
peak into an
exuberant exhibitionism,
wither into
a mockery
of past glory,
mutely pleading for attention--
former stars in ragged
dinner dress.
Unremarked, they fall
to earth,
decay into material
which will redress beauty.
Her Hand
lifts and unfolds
on to a shoulder,
an elegant
unfurling, a blossoming
into touch, petal
light, which will be
felt long
after its removal.
All five poems were first published in The Long Gores Suite (Lockout Press, 2002).
©2016 Michael L. Newell