January 2018
Editor's Note: Dick Allen passed away on December 26. He sent me this poem a few weeks before that — for the January issue. We miss him terribly. If you'd like to comment on this poem you may send your comment to me and I will forward it to his wife, Lori, OR you can send it directly to her at lorinallen285@earthlink.net
My two most recent books are Zen Master Poems (Wisdom / Simon & Schuster, 2016) and This Shadowy Place: Poems (St. Augustine’s Press, 2014). The latter received the New Criterion Poetry Award for books concentrating on traditional poetry forms. I was the Connecticut State Poet Laureate from 2010-2015. Now, my wife and I quietly write poetry by the shores of Thrushwood Lake, in Connecticut, and struggle daily to find calm in these surreal days. Website and weekly blog:<https://zenpoemszenphotosdickallen.net>
Author's Note: I actually wrote and published “Quagmire” considerably before the Trump administration, as a poem that would apply to almost any quagmire individuals or the nation might have entered. But it may seem most appropriate now, in these deranged times.
Quagmire
In it, we try to walk and talk
at the same time:
steps and words, steps and words
so undermined
nothing seems safe, no way seems out,
mud lies everywhere,
and the stink of the place, the shiftiness of it,
its murky air.
Do we crawl back? Do we muck on,
slosh to one side?
Left seems right and right seems left.
Nothing’s verified.
Had we found clear rivers, we
could follow how they run;
had we talked the clouds apart
we could trail the sun.
But swamp and marsh and bog and fen
stretch all around.
The buzzard’s on the crooked branch
and there’s no high ground.
-This Shadowy Place: New Poems (St. Augustine’s Press)
Author's Note: I actually wrote and published “Quagmire” considerably before the Trump administration, as a poem that would apply to almost any quagmire individuals or the nation might have entered. But it may seem most appropriate now, in these deranged times.
Quagmire
In it, we try to walk and talk
at the same time:
steps and words, steps and words
so undermined
nothing seems safe, no way seems out,
mud lies everywhere,
and the stink of the place, the shiftiness of it,
its murky air.
Do we crawl back? Do we muck on,
slosh to one side?
Left seems right and right seems left.
Nothing’s verified.
Had we found clear rivers, we
could follow how they run;
had we talked the clouds apart
we could trail the sun.
But swamp and marsh and bog and fen
stretch all around.
The buzzard’s on the crooked branch
and there’s no high ground.
-This Shadowy Place: New Poems (St. Augustine’s Press)
© 2017 Dick Allen