Man, Ross should be doing a MFA. He's turning out more poetry than some of my fellow students. You're doing Bozeman and MSU proud buddy. Do a little workshopping in the comments. Thanks for the energy Ross. Again, sorry about the formatting. - D.L. “Run Amidst the Raindrops in Autumn”
Well, here we stand now, a line of tile found down by the creek bed and nestled
Between the green glass bottles left strewn about by the pebble-beached sand.
And what could be found inside such beings there?
There, over and under the red picnic tables scraped of their paint and stripped
Down to mere woodgrain, sliced between two grand products labeled mine
And yours. The bins only laid their lids after the winds, the four winds blown
From North and South, where the two became only one or more, not the two.
The beach laps underneath a very blue moss-covered terrace found by someone
Other than us...before us...after us...I don't see.
Seeing includes leveling the towers of gutshots and resurrecting a landlocked
Insider only appropriate for the days of our lives, not the gems on television.
The eyes cannot hear where we should have gone, nor can they have the patience
To gob the lot of dead leaves sleeping over by the tables. Would you resemble
The South wind, harrowing and warm, with lights brought up from cheap bars
And sleazy gin buckets lost in the hallway down by the dark-skinned donkey?
Can we explore the recesses of the Byzantine Empire with which we had built, yet we
Topple? Worth the civility of beads traded for mush and bikes, and bowls filled
With realistic expletives only heard in Hemingway's bullfights? Would you resemble
The North wind, frightening and cold, off of the mountain ranges seen as scenery
Bluer than any pastel plaster of Paris, or the bust of one great man lost in his own
Mired calamus root buried under the grounded gifts? Growing in time without the
Philosophical rousing of a better man unfounded and forgotten under books, do
They drop by the artisan's house and ask him these questions? He has what they need,
Wouldn't they say, and violet-quickened note takers would ask the questions of each
To see and forget. One must forget that life once led, and remember the times found
Beside the benches bereft of varnish, right next to those lidless bins filled with
Hate and filth. But the moss will continue to grow, and you too shall find something
Inside of the partaking. North or South, you staff a full journey toward the middle of the
Creek, and bury yourself in the tears of God's eyes, resembling that which once was, and Becoming today's Lady of the Lake, swimming forward, if only for a moment, and
Leaving Promethean hate behind, that which worked you mentally and finitely,
That which faltered and fell beyond sight.
Now he stands, shored and without light, lost in his own sadness struck down by floods
You may cause, but also the cause of those four winds with which you became one.
Now the winds blow and towers level, and the landlocked man becomes the outsider
Only seen in books read and printed on the paper thrown between the red picnic tables.
--Ross K. Tangedal
