October 2024
Robert Knox
www.prosegarden.blogspot.com
Editor's Note: In memoriam. Robert Knox was one of the earliest people invited by founder Firestone Fireberg to be a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, a role he kept until his death earlier this year. Kindness was a hallmark of his interactions with the poets in the community. Many of you wrote to let me know how much you appreciated getting his notes and comments on your poems. With permission from his dear wife, Anne, we are including two of his poems that reflect his personality and love of the world he left too soon. We hold him and his family in the light.

That November Feeling

That soft twilight, warm evening feeling,
right on top of the gut-check fragility that comes 
from not having the storm windows up,
or wood to burn, 
or any place to burn it
 
The last cricket
The first winter bird
The sophisticated half-tones of dying leaves
who know how to put on a show 
and still, after all these years,
haven’t gone complacent and given in to the temptation 
to show all their tricks 
at the first spell of forecast-panic 
and say, ‘There, are you happy?”
No, too much self-respect,
in trees, if not always in bipeds
 
Somebody’s Dad walking home 
Evening now, it gets late early
and so suddenly,
the peach-fuzz pink of the gently fading sky
like the remark
you wish to extend, like an offering, 
like a jewel,
at the lighting of the lights,
but can’t quite polish 
 
The ‘turn’ 
that turns once again to teach you
everything you need to know 
about turning
Oh my–thank goodness!–
     back here again.
 
11.06.20
Originally published in Verse-Virtual


Uphill

I walk slowly uphill.
It’s how I do everything.
Something has tipped the world off balance.
Now the sidewalk, the dirt road, the woodland path,
     is always trending up.
Strange… I remember thinking tasks completed, 
      gardens planted: 
‘All downhill from here.’

The world is green, a healthy color.
I dream of swapping flesh with the leaves 
that swarm the hillside,
     pirouetting in the devil-may-care late summer breeze.
But then, in autumn’s termination, all must wither and go under…
Well, yes, in the end, just a question of timing.

The great shade of the forest
stirs music in the minor key.
I will climb these heights, 
once more possess such sights 
in a theater of the heart. 

My feet regain the path,
reclaim their strength, their range of motion, 
renew my journey…
both up and down.
Originally published in Verse-Virtual


©2024 Robert Knox
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL