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DR. JAMES PIATT - POEMS

9/15/2016

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James, a retired professor and octogenarian, is the author of 3 poetry collections, "The Silent Pond” (2012), “Ancient Rhythms” (2014), and “LIGHT” (2016), and over 880 poems. His poems have been nominated for pushcart and best of web awards, and were published in The 100 Best Poems of 2015 & 2014 Anthologies. He earned his BS and MA from California Polytechnic University and his doctorate from BYU. His books are available on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.



                                       Someday

 
 
          Someday,
When there is no longer the
anticipation of time, I will try to
remember a beautiful smile,
clouds, flowers, mountains, and
red berries that gleamed from the
sun’s rays, and shadows and
silhouettes of golden goblets
filled with memories sitting on a mantle.
 
          Someday
I will try to remember faces that
now stare from graves into
ubiquitous rooms of forgotten
thoughts in my mind surrounded
by sentiments that were dropped
through slots in doors with broken
locks leading to hidden visions.
 
            Someday,
When the wind is filled with the
shadows of rusted bones circling
bronze epilates scattered among
the realities of existence touching
weariness loaded with collapsed
hours, I will sit in a stone chair
laden with incongruities and etch
faux images of the past on wood
and stone.
 
            Someday,
When I cross the dark boundary
of authenticity and enter a room
of pulsating sounds of lamenting
monks chanting though the
rubble of lost years and broken
echoes, and hear a cacophony of
broken chords consisting of
reedless saxophones and gutless
guitars playing a discordant
refrain of jazz in a bar in Chicago
along side a skinny chanteuse
with a constricted windpipe, I will
sing a sad song. 
 
              Someday,
when the rusted
hours are weary of my presence,
and I sit on the edge of classical
ruins next to the bones of a
Native American clinging to the
warmth of the setting sun, I will
hear the voice of the owl calling
my name and sense the calm
scent of death offering a release
from the strain of the last winter
of my life.
 
 
 
                            All Your Fading Memories
 
 
Before you are unable to do so,
Visit the place where your early
Impressions were formed when
You were but a small child: Listen
Again to the squawking of
Haughty Blue Jays, the strident
Cooing of Doves, and the rat a tat
Tapping and frenetic chatter of
Woodpeckers high In Oak trees.
 
Put your toes in the lazily flowing
Translucent rill, and eavesdrop
On frogs with their basso
Grumbling voices croaking In the
Reeds. Watch hawks soaring in
The sky high above your head,
And take note of their haunting
Trilling as they dip up and down
In the currents of the wind.
Watch Huge luminous louds scudding
Over the mountains in the
Distance, forming mysterious
Statues in the sky for only you to
See. Smell the beautiful aromatic
Scent of wild flowers wafting in
The breeze, and notice their
Colorful summer coats, which
They display with such merited
Vanity. Then in the dwindling
Hours of the balmy day, lean
Against the trunk of a Pine tree,
Close your eyes and listen to the
Silence, and remember all your
Beautiful fading memories.
 
 
 
                        Outside On A Summer Night
 
 
The golden moon is full tonight as secret
revelations bounce against the ebony
edges of its craters, and into my being.
The atmosphere is balmy and clear a
soft calmness prevails. Distant stars
appear close enough to touch; thin pink
clouds close enough to taste. I bend to
the breeze lazily ambling down an old
road filled with furrows, and ruts begging
for smoothness. The moon’s rays
encircle Oak trees lining the old road
like golden spider webs, leaving gold
tinted leaves that glisten with childhood
memories. The night is calm, and my
cares and worries vanish into summer’s
warm ebony Hours.
 
 
 
                        The Gift Of Another Day 
 
And…what is a metaphor without golden
wings that reach into lonely souls, or
without a fundamental definition of that
which cannot be, but is, or without
splinters of stars with gleaming voices
piercing our minds in the shattered
darkness of night?
 
And…what is a poem without limbs that
reach far into the unstressed iambic sky
causing rhyming feet
to walk along heaven’s edge?
 
When seasons come and go, and the
sun has risen, and set a thousand times,
when the owl has called my name in the
darkness of the late night, far too often,
and when dreams should be forming as
I attempt to sleep, I become aware that
the threads that wove my tenuous life
together are becoming, unraveled.
 
My poetic thoughts are becoming brittle
like my aging bones, my words, like my
weary flesh, are becoming ashen and
worn. I become aware that my poet’s
inky voice etched on canvass as white
as snow can only enter minds when the
grumbling gate to their soul Is opened:
Only then can my weakening mists of
words be accepted into their memories,
and reach into the spirit of their soul.
 
Future dreams flutter in the winds of
time like abandoned dry leaves in the
miasma of the last fading moments of
reality, slowly becoming unreachable, as
are the trails in the woods, which were
so dear to me, trails I used to walk upon
when I was young, during the early
morning hours of an apricot colored
dawn.
 
My years have fallen like bits of burnt
wood into a fast flowing river and have
been washed downstream to be judged
by raucous crows filling the black void of
life with cawing. I listen to doves cooing
in the barren trees on the side of the
dusty battered road that begs for
smoothness, and try to fight back
against the phantom that tries to paint
my breath with the corrosive color of
aging.  
 
In the wee hours of the vivid composite
colored morning, I hear the bells of a
church pealing far in the distance, and
listen to the final eerie wailing of a
coyote crossing the lea in a haughty
symbolic trot. I watch the moon outside
my window sending down beams that
pray for rain to quench the thirst of the
dry granite hard earth and wonder how
they will dig my grave in such hard
ground.
 
My long lost memories spin across my
mind like white crested waves in an
angry obscure ocean, creating a
colorless collage of feelings that cover the threshold between life and death, between grief and Joy, leaving icy thoughts echoing In my fading mind, and pain Increasing in my eroding body.
 
But… then in the breathless yawn of
daybreak, as I awake from my dark
somnambulant hours, I am stirred by the
day’s beautiful poetic pulse that shatters
the overwhelming darkness in my soul,
and paints an orange hue on the hills
and, the meadow below. It is then that I
realize that I have been given the gift of
another day of life… and sigh in
gratitude.
 
 
                                            On A Beach
 
 
An elderly man and
woman sitting in the sand
and bright sun under an
umbrella, slowly sway from
side to side with the
summer breeze, like pale
ecru pieces of paper
sculpture.
 
Only old memories appear
in their thoughts: The
present has little time to
form new ones.
 
The man reaches for the
woman’s hand, fingers
clasp together, like old
leather intertwining with
silken strands. She smiles
and her eyes like burnt
umber glisten, he gently
touches her face and
smiles too.
 
The oceans waves rumble
onto the sand with a
thunderous roar, but they
only hear the whisperings
of their hearts.
 
Time is fading; the past in
a space where hours rust,
where memories hoard
precious vanishing years,
becomes the presence.
 
They sit in serenity and
silence as the waves come
and go, and precious time
fades into the scarlet hued
​twilight. 
 
 
 
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