Focus

A fitting poem to have written in February.

Endurance 2/28/2011
Sometimes I watch the busy and
charging legs like windmills
as if the little plant
he carries means to kill
him but he doesn't stop to
set it down or takeabreath
feet like pistons hammer through
the dirt striking hard facing death
with life with
out fear.

I could be that six-legged ant:
footholds firm, winged in my career
across the pebbled weeks and days, plant
in hand with
out fear,
if I tried.


My first attempt at an acrostic poem, written during study hall, became very ironic:

Focus 1/1/2011
For ten seconds, if you could focus
On what you're doing
Could you
Use your time and not
Stop to write a useless, ugly poem.

Death Removes

Over the weekend, our 15 year old Labrador died. She was getting old so it wasn't altogether unexpected, but it was quite sad. Here are a couple poems about it. The title of the first one is an excerpt from a poem by Robert Frost called "Out, Out--" which has a similar, though importantly different theme. Also, we are reading E. E. Cummings in Literature class and I thought his style was fitting for the ideas of the second one. For those unfamiliar with this more visual style (as I am), it may look random, but every space and parenthesis does have one or more purposes. Some general guidelines to help with interpretation:
I use the letters "ed" as a symbol for death, not only as a final suffix but also as an ending that indicates the past tense, or finality.
In the first stanza, I describe how God first moved. In each stanza, watch for what it is that death removes.
Also, in each poem, "till" is used to refer to creation of life or potential for life (in terms of tilling the ground), in addition to its possible grammatical meaning of "until."

"since they were not the one dead--" 4/4/11
With what our dead dog
doesn't fill we hill
an island of dirt (untilled)
ringed by (soon not)dead grass.

And since winter
stings some unsprung ere spring
we walk whence we walked
and switch to
Black Sunday shoes
joining the living
singing spring.


e(n)d 4/4/11
In t he
(pre-beginning
was void un
moved) be
ginning God
moved, b(r)e
the(d)irt (un
moved)
till the dirt
moved.
th en(d e)
ath re
mov(e d)

Stand we
a
round the grave
a
million miles
a
part

(not) lifethoughts
of hikes and summers
shar ed
only shorthoughts
of liver worm squirms.

death
re mov ed.