D. R. JAMES - POEMS

D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020); his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project; and individual poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan.
https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage

​One Breath

One lake, one wave, one drop—one grain, one more
ripple in the sand on a beach, one beach,
one shore—one path, one stair, one step, one board,
one nail in the grain—one blade, one cluster
of dune-borne grass, one passage—one cottage,
one porch, one chair under shadow of an
eave—one breeze, one heat, one sun—one day, one
morning, one hour, one thought in the mind of
a soul, in his living, in his being,
in his life—one sky, one current, one breath.
 
                    —first published in Waymark: Voices of the Valley
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​Leaf Fall

​Asymmetric chandeliers instigate
their rhapsodic drop, the ruddling scumble-
trove of falling leaves and epiphanies
whose sillage shellacs paw, pelt, and breezes.
Trapezes sling these acrobatic hues
into bold arcs, risky spins, pronounced turns
before alights the wind-borne troupe of the
trees. Stippled bark akin to camo backs
the show, and cursive limbs announce the new
season: caesura ending summer’s song.
 
                    —first published in Escape into Life

 

​ 
Autumn in the Wings

​Twigs’ lush medium is converting to
calligraphy, the dismissal of leaves
to launch its winter forewarning. Laden
with late acorns, squirrels chuck-chuck meaningless
memos, counter-balance full bellies, tails
unfurled. I am embracing—keepsaking--
the unscrolling calendar, harvesting
days tossed my way, the prodigious burden
of nows. Hunters will bruise this calm soon, but
until then it’s choirs of jays, cranes, and crows.
 
                    —first published in Front Porch Review

 

​Slackening Observed

​ 
A cardinal, its heaven’s sound, the winter’s
effervescent rag with salutating
gait. Notes etch, sun foils, and cathedralic
miles enlarge the whispering. To center
oneself, to murmur, to intercept the
synchronizing run that’s rioting, is
as longingly still as the slope outside
the city’s heaves, the barn-red-confetti’d
woods, the uniform crisp of autumn days,
shallows iced to the shoreline, valley’s dream.
 
                    —first published in From Whispers to Roars

 

​Entering Winter with a Line from Gwendolyn Brooks

Horizon’s burst-smear of pink nonchalance
forgets We are things of dry hours and the
involuntary plan. In winter’s vise
I’ll wrestle — flail! — stampedes of elegies,
pendulums of memory, sidestepping
swathes of snow-fall brindled with late oak leaves’
yieldings: autumn’s ceding. But from this blunt
and silhouetted terrain, ranging out
tactically, cautious in my happenstance,
I will still delight — plod, but still ignite.
 
                                        —first published in Amethyst Review
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