Month: June 2019

Why did you stop writing?

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Why did you stop writing
when I know you have the words?
Your blank white pages
wait for your return.
Are you there?
Are you well?

I lost many words
during years I did not
believe I could find them
out on the tender and vast
landscape of my own living being
stretched across the years.

I did not know they were there
waiting for me to find them.
They did not call with loud voices
but lay silent all along
the paths of the green fields
of my one and only life.

I am gathering them up now,
words along the wayside fallen.
I will arrange them in lines
on the forbidding white page
making, fashioning, creating
a poem from me to you.

Our words – we string them together
as best we can – a gift
we were given from birth.
They help to patch holes
we’ve left behind us.
They help to create the way before us
into the green fields of our lives.

Portland, Oregon – June 23, 2019

I follow a few poetry blogs but noticed I’d not seen writing from some for a long time. I wonder what happened that they stopped writing?  There may be very good reasons. I know that it took many years for me to start up again, so there is hope for all writers out there.  Just start again, I beg you!

Weather and Climate Change

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

The weather changed today.
In the morning a marine layer, crisp,
lowered over the Pacific northwest –
gray and calm, cool as a silent prayer.
In the afternoon the sun drifted
overhead through wispy clouds;
warmth spread over our splendid fields
as spring became summer.

As a young boy a day such as this
was all I knew of weather.
As for climate, as with all science,
I was blissfully unaware
content to wish upon stars.

I’ve only wanted daily weather –
seasonal changes from warm to cold,
rain to wind to snow.
It was enough for me to know
that climate changes because
the axial tilt of the earth,
at 23.5 degrees, makes it so,
while the orbiting moon flails
endlessly at the foaming seas.

How little I knew of weather,
of climate and their ways.
The blame is mine.
As a boy I lay in the summer grass
watching the clouds drift by.
It was all I ever wanted to know
of weather, climate change
and the passing of our limited time. 

Portland, Oregon – Summer solstice, June 21, 2019.

Daybreak

/ Korin Thomas / 2 Comments

Aurora – Sun breaking dawn
Ora – Morning prayer
Aural – Birdsong

I can see
can hear
the shell of day
breaking in the morn,
cracked open in sharp sound
pouring clear sky
yolk of sun
sizzling in cool breeze
night fleeing the scene.

Day begins
broken, bright,
auroral, ora, aural.

Portland, Oregon – June 17, 2019

Light Through the Window

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

Through the front window
the sun’s warm light comes
in bright fingers feeling
windows and walls, fashioning
mosaics in shadows on the floor.
Whispers of wind in motion
enter the room as leaves
twisting on their branches
to form the sacred images of home.

The living room is still;
in the westering sun’s light –
aflame – the final flickering
before that bright being bends
simmering into still and dark waters.
The warm glow through the window fades,
deepening shadows lengthen and congeal
until the room itself vanishes
into the cool and quiet of night.

Portland, Oregon – June 11, 2019

Pages of the Night

/ Korin Thomas / Leave a comment

I will not turn on the light
as beside me she sleeps still.
Unstill I lie, reading lines
written onto the pages of night.
Projected there is darkness spelled in verse
lit from within by the light of memory.
I read, from a continuous scroll of poetic refrains,
a story of life without rhyme or form
flickering as if it were something old
unknown, without meter, beginning or end –
edited solely for the life of dreams.

Portland, Oregon – June 4, 2019