A Season's Greeting

(C) R.L.K.

glimpsed from a
distance through
swirling fall-
ing snow a
light in a
window is
beckoning

Another Non-Sonnet

(C) R.L.K.

Too cold tonight for anything other
than idling about, in and not out. So
it comes to pass: I’m drinking a cup
of hot cocoa and staring out the window
while the moonlit trees cast ink-black
shadows on the snow. Consider that
or consider this: a voice on the radio
speaking of stars devoured by black holes
(does anti-matter matter?), followed by
more voices discussing the need to stimulate
the economy, then the too-familiar sound
of someone making the music of melancholy.
Meanwhile, the trees wait, yes, the old trees
wait and wait for another winter to pass.

Approaching Winter (Four Variations)

(C) R.L.K.

1.
sunday afternoon:
the clouds are stretched flat over
the snow-covered hills

2.
under a just gone
gray sky an old bicycle
leans against a shed

3.
just after sunset;
a page of old newspaper
clings to a park bench

4.
the empty swing in
the backyard sways in the wind...
time, and time again

Writing for Some Reason

(C) R.L.K.

Sometimes, on December days,
a sadness settles in. The afternoon sun
paints long blue lines of shadow
on the frozen pond, bare branches
are splayed against the sky, and sometimes
clouds pass, white as empty pages.

Sometimes you think of places, of people,
of things long gone. Sometimes you recall
a simple song played in an old style. And sometimes,
gathering together fragments of abandoned poems,
you try to rediscover the point of this or that:
why just those words, coming one after another?

And sometimes, on December nights,
moonlight falls like stillness on the land.

Somewhat Later

(C) R.L.K.

The sound of the wind this afternoon,
As wistful as a beggar’s tune;
The sunlight glinting off the wall;
The leaves that quiver, ready to fall:
All will become a memory.
How brief a time a year can be.

Outward Bound

(C) R.L.K.

Snow-draped maple beside an old bungalow,
White beside white at the end of a road --
A place one might return to
After the doing and daring,
After the beck and call,
After it all,
At twilight, a weary soul might return.

And,
As this train speeds me on
Towards the winter hills,
Towards the darkening sky,
I think, after all this time,
All in good time,
No more goodbyes.

Old Hymns

(C) R.L.K.

A morning like this:
First of November, Feast of All Saints;
the ‘gray autumn’
of meditative feeling,
slaty skies, dead leaves.

What has happened has happened.
Let us remember
those who have passed.
Pause.
Beside the river a willow sways.

Remember?

Too many have left
without notice. Too much has emptied
around us, yet we remain
at the wind’s edge, next to nothing,
singing what songs we can.

Three Haiku

THREE HAIKU
(C) R.L.K.

1.
Leaf-strewn dead-end street
where a beggar shakes a can.
Sad tunes that repeat.

2.
Vacant swing. Shadow
of a crow on fading grass.
Where did summer go?

3.
Sunlight, for a while,
streaming down the rails.
Bless us mile by mile.

Syllabics

(C) R.L.K.

1.
The first few leaves
always seem to
fall the hardest.
Here, in this small
park, you watch them
tumble down, and
think: what a short
while summer is;
the thrush, the lush
grass, the roses
suddenly gone.

2.
Autumn is just this
wind, just these poor last
lost torn leaves dancing
in the wind, just this
sad old man watching
the poor last lost torn
leaves dance in the wind.

Another Tune For A Lonesome Traveler

(C) R.L.K.

It has to begin somewhere;
perhaps in a motel room with the window open,
sunup, wisps of mists outside, trees swaying in the wind.

You hear an old song on an old radio -
“Can’t help but wonder where I’m bound” -
and you do, even now you do.

Days, months, years have passed,
melody after melody has faded into a distant echo,
and still you wonder.

So many roads: the long and winding
road, the road to the interior,
the road that has no name.

"All that road rolling and all those
people dreaming in the immensity of it.”
And always, the road not taken.

Can’t help but wonder, though, if
at the end all roads merge into one:
the road that you leads you home.

Two Haiku

(C) R.L.K.

1.
The wind of autumn
Blows chilly all day and yet
The scarecrow smiles.

2.

As the evening falls,
I realize just how much
Has returned to the wind.

Tell Me What It Is Later

--The Mystique of Modal Jazz--
(C) R.L.K.

Call it kind of blue,
melancholy beauty in a horn,
wailing for a long-lost friend;

play it on the lamplit corner,
of a lonely street,
over the sound of rustling leaves

and haunted things
like long trains rolling
through the rainy night.

An Autumn Morning

(C) R.L.K.

Last night's rain is a memory.
Now, only a few clouds pass,
white as empty pages.
The maples atop the hill
sway lightly in the wind
and, from somewhere, not far away,
comes the soft song of some small bird.

Somehow

(C) R.L.K.

It just happens: late in the day,
when leaf shadows tremble in half-light,
nostalgia comes out of nowhere
to carry you away. Slowly,
a lone cloud skims the treetops.
The low sun etches shadows on the sidewalks.

It just happens: the night descends,
and with the night, comes the thought
that there is always another shoebox full
of old photographs to sort through
while crickets chirp outside and you
grow older with every chirp.

Only Then

(C) R.L.K.

It is the moment you pause
for poetry, the moment you stop
beneath the fading moon,

the moment the wind sighs,
leaf shadows tremble in new light,
and morning mist hugs the hillside,

the moment to seize a rhyme,
sublime for a time, the moment that soars
like a sparrow twinkling its wings in daring flight.

Time Passing, Who Knows Why?

(C) R.L.K.

Yesterday there were sparrows
in the treetops and over them
a sky beyond blue. This morning
no birds sing and dark clouds
crowd the rooftops. Umbrella in hand,
you follow the old sidewalk, moving
slowly, weighted down with farewells.
Passing the park, you notice that the wind
is nudging the empty swings. The rain
falls like sadness on the grass
and you hear in the distance
another train bound bound for nowhere.

The Train I Ride

(C) R.L.K.

It wasn’t the first time I had stared out the window
of a train bound for the city,
while the wind whistled outside,
while the thin trees swayed,
and over the rain-soaked rooftops
a sad dawn was rising
like an old man who has lost touch with his friends,

but it was the first time in a long time
I remembered that day years ago
when we rode another train together
away from the city,
and the wind was still,
the trees were thick with white blossoms,
and the sunlight glinted off the window.

How Steadily Returning

(C) R.L.K.

There is something
about the rain tonight --
how it drops
into the funnels of the streetlamps,
how it sprays off the maples,
or burbles in the gutters,

and how it does all this
as if to welcome me
back to my hometown.
The rain makes it easy to remember
other nights, dreams dreamed
as only youth can dream them.

It all fits somehow,
the pale light, the shadowy trees,
the sounds of a summer night
like so many summer nights,
the old familiar things
reflected in a puddle of rain.

Summer Sequence

SUMMER SEQUENCE
(C) R.L.K.

Slow old train crossing a rusty bridge;
the night assumes the shape of rain.

....
Pale moon peeking through parting clouds;
Willows bow at the end of the road.

....
One thin dime in the beggar’s cup;
how many summers have come and gone?

....
Dusty boots left out on the porch;
the evening wind rustles the curtains.

Non-Sonnet

NON-SONNET
(C) R.L.K.

It’s the kind of summer morning
that might make you think of an
Edward Hopper painting: bright sky,
empty street, shuttered shops, and,
of course, trees looming in the distance,
lending strangeness to the landscape. So,
what’s that feeling? Why, it could be
the lowdown lonely town wander around
nowhere bound blues coming on. That’s
tuneful enough, a way to say “how it
really is”: this day, this scene where
nobody waits to be in somebody's dream.
Just jot these notes, then: Seven a.m.
Sunlight and shadow on old stone stairs.

The House She Lived In

THE HOUSE SHE LIVED IN
(c) R.L.K.

You might come upon it suddenly, unexpectedly,
when you are out walking at twilight. Perhaps the wind
will be blowing cold, and the willows that line the old road
will be swaying, their shadows flung across new-fallen snow.

Maybe you will notice the light on the porch
softly glowing, the door rattling as if longing
to be opened, the windows reflecting clouds.
It will all seem strange, yet it will all seem familiar.

And you will walk on, thinking of past things,
of long slow days with sunlight and songs in the air.
You will walk on, while the moon rises
in the sky above this world built of dust.

Newku

NEWKU
(C) R.L.K.

1.
sun slowly sinking --
beside the old pond
willow branches shudder in the wind

2.
under a cloud-cumbered sky
silent streets,
trees embracing the dusk

3.
rain fizzles
out; one note
from the wind chimes

4.

just after midnight;
the streetlamps
hang like misted moons

Five Fragments

FIVE FRAGMENTS
(C) R.L.K.

whoever would wander

Wishing the blues away in the wan light
of a winter evening won't hasten spring,
yet we do as we have done, thus far,
in a world of loss where snowflakes
swirl around the streetlamps. Tramping on,
we wonder about the distance demanded,
ponder again the distance gone.

seasonally

A summer comes, goes, that's how it is.
Days follow days: slivers of blue sky quiver
in the branches, then the trees thin out,
and clouds pile on clouds. So the story goes,
and so we go, following, just so, into a fall.

if so, if only

This is how it is now: a cup of warm tea
after a late supper. Rattle of windows. Outside
the March wind flings a final few snowflakes
across the landscape. This is spring now, a new
season, though the songs on the radio are old songs
that speak of old things. Old ourselves, if we begin again
we begin not with new hope, but with hope to hope again.

what now is

It is April once more and so we listen
to the familiar music of the rain. We have come
this far, merely persisted, and wondered
all the while if it mattered to the world.
This far, thus far, in the world. So we say:
it is raining, and there is a haze of first leaf.
We call it spring: a mere word in a mere world?

travelers

The clock in this old cafe stopped
years ago, but that's okay -- things
stop, as we have stopped for coffee
on our way to parts unknown (always,
it seems, on our way to parts unknown).
And so we sit; steam rises from our cups
and we speak of things that have stopped,
of people who are gone... Outside,
rain is falling on a dusty road.