Late Harvest Moon Poem
The harvest moon unseen
Shining in a dark cloudless sky.
Looking now
The sun struggles
Clouds rain.
It was there then
Will be again.
It will not be
The last one I miss.
It is a tradition to write poems at the time of the harvest moon. Missed it, and so this is born late. Okay, because the time and weather have changed, as they always do.
Harvest
I dug furrows
Some deep
Some straight
And others.
Seeds buried
Or strewn
Where they fell.
Rained when it did
Sun and moon.
Harvest now
Wondering whether
The crop or me
Was supposed to grow.
Tuning Fork
Strike and resound
A single perfect note
Against which
Our poor play is practiced.
The texts are ancient
Thoughts in a case
Replaced by the
Younger and fresher.
This tuning fork
Centuries old.
Bring me a gadget
A gizmo
To give me my pitch.
Ah but
The warm simple beauty
Of the vibrating metal
Is the practice
Before the practice.
Fallen Petal
Petals
The petals have
Begun to fall
This one still
Moist and colorful
Soon dry and brown.
At first
Mindlessly discarded
Now retrieved.
The stems
Will be bare.
What then?
Reason
Reason
as solid
as a rock.
Clinging to it
in the middle
of the ocean.
When I look to friends, colleagues and mentors who have taught and influenced me, I see in many of them a happy and helpful balance of reason and spirit. I thank them, and recommend having such people in your life.
This may be what I might want others to say of me, that I neither abandoned reason nor clung to it too tightly.
Magic
Magic
must be
real.
1
Prayer Rope
Prayer rope
Strung with knots
To count
But not
To untie.
2
Knots
Cut off
The knots
You can’t untie
But keep them.
While You Are Sleeping
Messages arrive
While you are sleeping.
Ignore them.
Would you rather
Wake up to a postman
Intruding at the door
Or to the dawn, sun
Silence and thoughts
From eons ago?
You’ve got mail.
Gravity
This beautiful truth
Lifts me up
Weightless in the sky.
This ugly truth
Drags me down
Into the abyss.
I try knowing no difference
To make peace with gravity.
Dawn Moon
Full moon in the West at dawn.
What rare magic.
What picture could tell
The time and direction
The sounds and sun
Reflecting off
Its distant pale
Pockmarked face
Now fading?
When it happens again
What record will there be?
This and memory.
Bob Schwartz 