 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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