Poetry

In my scant free time, I write poetry. I’ve done so since 12th grade at Longwood High School. I credit my parents and my Advanced Placement English teacher, Dr. Charles Anderson, with instilling my love for this art form in me. Here are recent poems that came to me while running at the Norman J. Levy Park and Preserve in Merrick…

Dance of the Gulls
Herring gulls converge
In a capricious dance,
Streaking like
Electrical impulses
Across an azure plain,
Compressing
Space and time
In a strange singularity,
Intended, it seems, to delight
This lonesome observer,
Bound by gravity’s rapacious grip.

The Geese
They fly like arrows
Slung across the horizon,
A merry band of survivors
Jabbering
Like schoolchildren
On a field trip to the zoo.

They are bound for home.
Home is nowhere —
And everywhere.

They soar past
The rivers of asphalt
That we lay,
Above the shiny skyscrapers
That we erect,
Over the tumult
That is humanity.

People dominate.

Canada geese reign.

The Atlantic
I am chasing sunlight
On this cold day.
As it strikes the ceaseless swells,
It dances
In refracted symmetry,
A thousand amber
Explosions
Igniting at dusk,
Like fireflies
Drawn together
In the gathering darkness.

The Fog
I plunge headlong into
The ponderous white,
Seeking to discover
Myself on the other side.
The trees have vanished.
The water has vanished.

Enveloped in a cloud,
I see not the long path before me.

I cannot predict it.
I can only walk on,
Into the indiscernible mist.
At the fork in this dreamscape,
I will lose the way,
Or find myself.

Winter Path
The delicately hewn path
That meanders up
This gray hillside

Will vanish
Come spring,
When the mugworts
And gnats invade.

The foxes
Will follow,
Slipping like phantoms
Behind the chaotic curtain
Of underbrush
And disappearing
Into darkness.

I dare not follow when they do.

Poison ivy will curl around
The walnut and ailanthus trees
Like a serpent,

Protecting this garden,
Protecting the foxes.

These furtive creatures
Crave their secrecy.

It is their ancient instinct,
Their survival mechanism,

In a forest full of shadows.

None is greater than
The interloper who walks
The dusty road that encircles
This woodland.

The Mystery of Life
Here I stand, on this day,
On this ridge,
Alone,
Spying on the sun
As it scatters light rays
Across the steel-gray Atlantic,
Breathing life into submerged societies
Beyond my reach,
Beyond my understanding.

I feel the sun’s heat
As it breathes life into me.
There, beyond the sheltering
Trees that are my fortress,
Is the universe,
And I am but a particle
Born of the stardust
That once brewed
In the primordial waters
Before me.

Yes, I realize, I am sustained
By a gaseous fireball
Floating in the far reaches of space,
Beyond my reach,
Beyond my understanding.

Life in the balance
Tiny orbs,
Red and yellow,
And ripe for picking,
Hang like fleshy
Masses of DNA
On loosely woven strands
That spiral ever so gently
Up the frustrated tree
That grows here and there
On the now barren hillside.

Snow falls.
The wind whispers.
Winter is nearly upon us.

On the hard earth,
The berries, half-eaten
And fast decomposing,
Are scattered,
The remains of a recent meal.

What manner of creature trod here?
I wonder.

There, upon this hill,
A family of foxes has carved a deep hole.
Above, amid the tangle of branches,
Are perched two bird nests.
These vines at my feet,
These wiry vines,
So invasive in nature,
Sustain life in this solemn forest.

The earth provides.
Yes, the earth provides.
Winter is nearly upon us.
The wind whispers.

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