My dream of publishing a book of poetry might have begun when I was a teenager, writing overly-religious poems until graduating from high school, but it began to take deeper roots in the late 70s and early 80s when I began to write poems I considered worthy of being read by someone other than myself. I remember reading my poem “Position Embracing Itself” (written when I was a sophomore in college) at a break-out session in Boston at the National Council of Teacher of English annual conference in 1981. The individuals in this small group were would-be poets who had not yet had a collection of their poems published. After I read this poem, one gentleman complimented me on one of the phrases in the poem: “A consecration of the wind.” He asked if he could borrow the phrase and promised to credit me with its origin. I said yes, but I still don’t know what he did with my line. I do, however, know what I did with it – I named my collection of poems A Consecration of the Wind. This collection is available on Amazon — click here.
I consider myself fortunate to have found a publisher who decided to work with me and produce a book of which I am very proud. This month, on two separate occasions, I will be launching my debut collection of poems in a place I love – Warren County, Virginia. “Position Embracing Itself” is the first worthy poem I ever wrote, and it begins the section The Art of Darkness in my book. I hope you enjoy this poem.
Position Embracing Itself
I have seen your face
Among other faces
Until you, undisguised,
Fade into the mist.
Then the images become
Blurred upon appearance.
The boardwalk, empty,
Emerges with the tide,
And shells left unturned
Bleed rhythmically
With the waves.
A shallowness of horizons unstirred
Comes running to me.
Swaddled in November,
Buried under snow,
An apparition appeared
And disappeared on course
Like soft music flowing
From a Muse’s hands and eyes.
First the eyes blinked,
Then the veins became exposed.
In the fountain,
Water spuming from her mouth,
She stands still,
Oblivious to the wet eyes.
Night,
Alone with the whispering smoke
Of a figure abreast of me,
The saccharine fumes of it
Running across my shoulders,
Blurring my vision of trees
Staggering before me,
Of smoke
Curling between my legs.
As daylight broke
The landscape into colors,
I left a piece of flesh
Behind to turn to ashes.
Rocking
And watching the patterns
Of snow on the pane,
They melt and merge
Till beyond them
I see your face.
We acknowledge sighs
And separate breaths,
And you sense the duality
That occurs within me.
Later, when you are one
With the horizon,
I smell your skin
As though you were still here.
Out of the fog
Summer is born, and
The artifice of love has surfaced.
I have been in the car
Careening down the road
Till the fear of the impact
Brought me back.
Outside, the lightning strikes
A sensual blow,
But the storms occur
In the wombs of women.
A consecration of the wind
In a tawny month reveals
Images that flicker and return
To disrupt, while
Words drift numbly and vanish
Before the dropping of a rose.
In the stillness, the breeze
Encounters a shadow.
A pale fume writhes its way
Through the earth;
I will not surface again…
I will not surface.
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