As One

The rain is eighteen inches or so on the porch

edge.  By my calculus of rainfall, a light one

last night.  Is there never a calculus in our

attempt to understand what we see and feel

and think?  Dreams, off-hand prophecies, 

the Freudian slips of life.  We collect and sift

the collected and discarded elements of our lives

in hope to see a pattern, a proof of life lived.

We are all artist trying to make the pieces fit

or better yet see where they have fitted in 

but not without a sense of wonder 

of how now came to be now 

by what we’ve done, what was done and 

how the two now seem as one.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Baiting

I throw a slightly baited hook

into memory wanting something

to appear but not too big almost

certain I’d prefer such a memory

to get away and refuse me the chance 

to bring it in.  There are things in the past

too big for a morning like this to hold

so I have used a small piece of bait

of remembering to lure a moment 

or two to me: a remembered song,

a whiff of perfume, a woman passing

casting a memory.  Some moment that doesn’t

hold gain and loss, a blues riff of the heart,

love held and lost. . . .  I’m beginning to

think I don’t have any other moments

that gave what these did.  Reel my line in,

know I don’t need to bait the past at all:

what will come will come.

Once again remember it’s better to receive 

than to ask for what I don’t need.

I think I’ll just float on this stream.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

No Showtimes Given

In the repertoire of life, repeat performances

are never given.  Improvisation is the aesthetic,

variations on a theme.  Beginnings  

in the realm of moments forever ending.

“Once upon a time,” echoing throughout

eternity.  Calls for, “Play it again” are heard

but never repeated.  Even our memories 

change over time, one thing changing another.

I could carry a sign – The Life and Times of Byron

Hoot – and know how true and false the story,

how impossible the task of words to catch

experience, how life improvises what I would

otherwise leave out.

-Byron Hoot

https://www.facebook.com/hootnhowlpoetry/

The Mind in the Wind Seeing Where Things Lie

I am riding the wind, surveying the damage

of the storm as if I’m a bird caught on the wind

currents handed off like a baton in a relay race

whose finish line gets no closer.  I see I am surveying

my life by wind and breeze, by close to the earth,

by above the trees in an instant of time and the perspective

changes.  The damage and what’s left untouched immense.

The reasons for both unknown, the causality for each 

equation unfinished on a blackboard.

This flight is hardly god-like though it suggests an 

omnipresent point-of-view.  I remind myself I am human

regardless of what I see, what I surmise has happened,

what dreams may still come to me.  What I need are nights

of deep sleep; this riding the wind is not as easy 

as it would seem to be.  So often the spirit is broken 

when things are clearly seen.  So often it is made whole.

-Byron Hoot

visit hootnhowlpoetry.com.

Communion

I buy Fig Newtons

occasionally. They 

are a communion

with that time when Mrs. Heinz 

would give them to me when

Dad and Mom, Reverend

and Mrs. Hoot, would call

on her to see how she 

was, to listen, to pray, 

to leave.  And sometimes

half the Fig Newtons would

be eaten by her kids and me.

I’m not certain when I take

a bite I don’t hear, “The body

and blood of life.”  We’d walk

across a wooden bridge over

a small stream to get to the car.

The silence inside 

as we drove away.

-Byron Hoot

http://hootnhowlpoetry.com/

Spare Me

Spare me encounters

With the self-possessed

That if uninterrupted

Use more ‘I’s’ in conversation

Than can be found

In a two-acre potato patch.

-Wayne H. Swanger

Flying Squirrel

I saw it

As it saw me 

From its pantry 

Hideaway:

A momentary shock,

An uninvited guest, 

An inconvenient mutuality,

Co-inhabitants of faded grandeur 

Amidst the forest

Finally, face-to-face,

Simultaneous recognition,

Suspense suspended,

Both of us finally knowing

The source of those

Strange, nocturnal sounds

-Wayne H. Swanger

Memory Lane

                         I

Light snow, the temperature at freezing,

a breeze moving the outermost tips

of branches.  I sit inside.  I look out 

to see in like a sorceress casting bones

to read the time not yet here arising 

from the past.  There are days for remembering

and days for not remembering.  Like the scales

of Justice, who knows how they are balanced.

The light is up, the sun hidden.  “Like memories,”

I say, reach for my coffee, look outside

again wondering where I’ve put my talisman. 

                         II

Who has not felt that treble hook

of the past sink into a moment, drag you back 

into the vortex of what was and then that sense

of drowning?  And who has not escaped?

Sputtering, fighting for air, saying,

"Never again!"  finding a pearl in the center

of your fist.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Rain Crow

At times she wondered how it all would end

even after she must have known it was ended.

Sometimes when the wind blew, bringing rain again,

she cast her dreams aside and flew herself away.

Some say she lived alone against the dark side of the mountain; 

some say her madness came from what she knew of flying.

But she always cried before the rain began,

from the darkness and the broken heart and the fever of dying. 

I heard the rain crow just before a cold rain swept

down from shadows and across the cold gray morning.

A chill was in the air and the rain crow’s song sailed,

lost and lonely and full of old dreams, like a bird’s wings

touched by mist and magic and dark dreams folding.

Some say she kept her secrets, alone across the forest unforgiving.

Some say she calls the rain, she calls the rain, 

from her own soul to cool the madness and the fever of living.

-Ramey Channell

Appalachian Spring: A Morning Rhapsody

I silently slip out

Into the grayness,

Night chill lingers

In dawn’s dew

World awakens;

Clearing its throat 

With tentative chips and calls,

Stirrings on branch, in field

Alert, I watch… listen,

A crescendo of radiance

And sound inexorably bound,

Spontaneous rhapsody

Of light and melodies

Voices swell,

Birdsong at sunrise, 

A fitting encomium

To this spring morning

-Wayne H. Swanger

Road Closed

I kept the radio on a sport’s talk station

because I did not want to hear 

the conversations the drive was ready

to give if I gave silence and the way

home a chance to collaborate.

I couldn’t take that collective voice 

of longing and desire creating poetry 

whose purpose was to turn the car around

and drive back as if I could enter the past

by a different route without reading a sign

that read, Road Closed.  That is the seduction

of the past – to find a road back.

I’ve driven enough to know that the unknown 

is the only road with certainty, the one 

“that goes on forever” revealing hidden beauty

and treasure and love.  Still, I kept

the station on until I was out of range

and had to face my dreams and memories.

The hum of the tires like a powerful chant 

keeping me from turning back.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com