Music of Other Tables
Music of Other Tables
Half listen so
Duets from other tables
Are sounds minus meaning
Words to notes
Scales of breakfast
And lives.
Bob Schwartz
Tag: poetry
September 29, 2016
September 24, 2016
First Geese
First Geese
Easy to see
Against the light gray
A flying line of ten.
Before the look
A single honk.
Scan the sky.
Morning is the clock
Geese the calendar
Read standing
Neck bent up
As they disappear
Dragging the north wind
Behind them.
September 18, 2016
Late Harvest Moon Poem
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.
September 14, 2016
Harvest
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.
September 13, 2016
Tuning Fork
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.
September 11, 2016
Petals
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?
September 11, 2016
Reason and spirit, wisdom and compassion
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.
September 5, 2016
Magic
Magic
Magic
must be
real.
September 3, 2016
Knots
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.
September 1, 2016
While You Are Sleeping
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.
Bob Schwartz 