By Charles A. Perrone
The solidity and concretude
of this frigid block of material
prompts me to ponder
the liquidity and lightness
of this aerial being of flakes
each intricate and distinct
from the next and all others
designed to make me think
of an ethereal alternative
to the prescribed dosage.
Larry Thatcher
And smoke. There’s always that smoke
down the lane. Waiting, it seems. I go to work
as town wakes up. As someone’s pitching
split oak and maple into the hungered blazing mouth
of a brick oven at the local pizza joint.
Something windless holds chimney smoke
at the intersection.
Waits for me. I drive up, dividing,
sweeping the scent into curls before seeing it,
taken back to flashes of campfires, realizing
where I am along my morning journey,
as the red light grows into green.
Smoke rises on the early ridges of mountains
south of town today. A prescribed fire,
to keep the easily agitated highland spirits of the Cherokee
National Forest satisfied with a wide birth of smudging.
If it was up to me, we’d all line up before the fire.
Find our own cleansing.
The morning is haze-tinted. The snowy gray of clouds.
The patterned bits of red and pink yet burnt away,
wanting singed off like early work from our minds.
Visions of what’s always asleep in the layered forest floor,
dangerous enough to need
annihilation, prescription.
Do we keep enough stores along our ridges,
dry goods dragged up safe out of the deadwood valleys
to the rocky tops,
thoughtful of sight-to-sight peaks
we’ll set afire when words are needed in the sky
for the world to know we’re in trouble again?
But does anyone really watch anymore? In their sleep.
Can they distinguish between the dangerous fires
of the world and the even more dangerous fires
of dreams?
Who watches? Whether they believe
or not? Are there watchers still in the world?
It was a day for ghosts.
Fog hanging in the air,
a mist that never turned
to rain. Leaves slick
as ice and the ground
underneath in a surface
thaw making walking
tricky. I saw plenty,
all deer no parents
or grandparents or family
stretching back to my
beginnings. Only deer,
the ones who couldn’t leave
the woods, the weather:
peripheral visions disappeared
in each step, each pause,
each pawing. Each head bob.
I wondered if that was the kind
of ghost I’d be, the one unable
to leave, the one so in love
with here that eternity means
nothing, some promise land
a fragment of slivered eyes
unable to see why no one,
once here, would want to leave
like the deer I saw all day
while I hunted the living deer
of which I saw none.
Only the ghosts that turn
heaven upside down.
-Byron Hoot
I wonder how the gravestones
have worn in that cemetery
in Rising Son, behind
The Church of the Brethren.
Mom and Dad and his parents,
two sets of Reverend and Missus
Hoot. There’s cornfields and woods
and deer trails across the graves,
the granite holding minerals
the deer try to pry loose with
their tongues. I wonder if the deer
see the ghosts – the ones content
to be where they are, the others
in a disarray of time and place,
the refusal of acceptance. I have
not visited in years and worry
about remembering how to get
there. In my heart it’s just a step
away – the casket, the preacher,
the living and the dead, the drive
away, the look back. The corn
and trees and wind.
-Byron Hoot
I fear my grandchildren are beyond
the redemption of the hunt.
Which worries me.
They may never know the primal truths
that hone a soul to be a person –
hard enough but more so when removed from trees
and hills and stream, learning game,
reading sign.
All necessary to being better today than yesterday.
Lessons that can be taken in.
I hunt and fish religiously.
In ways sacred, where knowing and honoring
and deciding in a split-second matter
as the metaphysical realities they are.
Metaphors full of meaning the wilds give
what no cities can. I worry what kind of stories
my grandchildren will tell sitting around a fire.A Poem by PHILIP KENT CHURCH
~
After being born again, I wanted to fight for God, see the war won,
But, after fighting for what I saw as right, I tired of the damage done.
Though I'd been a strong warrior against the world's evils that I sensed,
Defending God and church, in my righteous cause completely convinced.
The fruit of my labor wasn't joyful, peaceful or loving - facts uneasily dismissed.
After behaving and believing best I could, apparently - something had been missed.
Well-versed in the Word, I'd sought the full armor to, as a "Christian Soldier," stand,
But I realized I was desiring my own trophies, I hadn't been humble under command.
Though it meant placing my personal aspirations, what I desired, upon the shelf,
I had to become willing - no matter what the cost - to God's will . . . surrender myself!
First and foremost, I learned that my feud wasn't with others, the judge is God above,
Though I might be persecuted for it, my first duty to God and neighbor – was a ‘real love.’
That all I was to do and say must be from love, knowing, even in death, God would mend me,
Though there be things I desired and saw as ‘right,’ I'd do God's will - go where He'd send me.
I had to humble myself with a will, if required - to be “last” and serve others every day,
And if I became confused - not seek my own, but recall that Jesus is the truthful way.
Though I might not be popular, successful or politically regarded to suffice,
I'm only a foot-soldier in love's Army - my life forfeited - and bought with a price!
Sometimes there's a way that seems right, even in what some Christians try to render,
But it must be God's way - He is our commander to whom ourselves, we must -
. . . SURRENDER!
An Inspirational Sonnet Form
By PHILIP KENT CHURCH
~
Was it some hidden desire, disease or sin? The Bible does not say,
But there was a "thorn in his flesh" that bothered Paul, so he'd pray.
God would not remove this, despite being all powerful and omniscient,
And, knowing a servant's weakness, said only, His grace was sufficient.
No one knows of the thorn in Paul's flesh, only why it was left neglected.
It was to show God's strength, which through a weakness was perfected.
Now, Paul had prayed three times about this thorn, he had dealt with it that long,
Though it was a weakness, he wasn't condemned for it, God's grace being strong,
Knowing God would not let this weakness separate them must've been a relief.
That God doesn't condemn a believer's weaknesses, if in such a grace is belief.
Maybe, just maybe, Christians should think twice before holding other's with scorn.
God's grace might be sufficient for them too, if a weakness to their flesh be a thorn.
So, before frightening another believer with any notions of hell's fires to burn,
Maybe we should remember that the merciful are blessed with mercy in return!
The sky was the back of a sheep,
a burning pink fleece
the sun ignited. By chance
or invocation I saw what didn’t
last too long – now the clouds
are grey-blue-white with
the baby blue sky behind. In
that moment the dawn did what
all art does – it made me stop,
take in, consider what is beyond
words but not experience, not
beyond feeling. That beauty
Nature possesses, gives we translate
into grace by the way we see ourselves,
treat others. Like all art
it made room for another moment
even as the memory etched onto
my heart mixing now and forever.
-Byron Hoot
-hootnnhowlpoetry.cOm."
The leaf on the edge
of the porch is
a gentle reminder
how seasons change,
how one form morphs
into another,
how beauty doesn’t
always dance in the wind,
how the leaf says, “I am you,
you are me.” How I have
to agree.
-Byron Hoot
I
The blood-red fallen maple leaves
looked as alive on the ground
as they had on the trees.
If “the past is never past,”
then the dead are never dead –
now is forever in a moment.
Hence the admonition, “Pay
attention” spoken through all
time, in all cultures makes sense.
There are verities no ideas, dogmas
can dislodge and life-in-death
and death-in-life is one of them.
The truth is I love the leaves
on the trees, I love the leaves
on the ground – both beautiful.
II
The furnace running
is a sure sign fall
is here as well as
the frost, the fallen,
falling turned leaves,
the days one minute
shorter from one
to the other. And that
melancholy of the heart,
that sweet sorrow
for remembered time,
that sweet longing
for dreams to come true,
that fall into the paradise
of joy and sorrow,
stories to be told.
-Byron Hoot
The atmosphere was the thinnest cheesecloth
filtering the light into a fine mist of gold
dust and the sky held dark, massive, aggressive
gray clouds with the whitest white billowing
clouds next to them as if they knew
alone their beauty and terrible majesty incomplete
but side-by-side a beauty and awe to be remembered.
There was a shimmering of houses, the woods,
the fields of corn with the green, now golden green,
swathes cut in-between. I thought how beauty and art
arises from the right combination of parts the heart
grasps immediately and thought again why we are given
such scenes if not to take them in and be moved by them,
to create in our lives such a beautiful, terrifying, seductive art
that can change everything.
-Byron Hoot
