Poetry

(All poetry by Bruce Dale Wise) Crossing the Swamp by Jon MacNaughton by Caud Sewer Bile "If freedom of speech is taken away...we may be led, like sheep to...slaughter." —George Washington The boat of freedom of MacNaughton follows Leutze's pic of Washington upon the Delaware, grave, foggy, thick. Don Trump...

In the Poetry Writing Workshop “Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have his own authority also for the Muse having ‘dictated’ to him the ‘unpremeditated song’, and let this be answer to those who would allege the fifty-six  various readings of...

—from A Gallery of Ethopaths* The computer is a simple tool— It cannot change an arrant fool Into a brilliant, thoughtful scholar, Although the damned thing costs top-dollar. It cannot help someone to write Whose prose is just a total blight Nor delineate a topic For someone naturally myopic. It...

  Slender pillar burning bright, remarkably distinguished. I wish that you could stay the night but you must be extinguished. Your wick shall be collapsed between my thumb and foremost finger. Apologies for hours hence that you had thought to linger. Yet even as I snuff you out, fear not,...

Sonnet on the Death of Teeth I’m amused by a brush with Death In the depths of my bathroom mirror. His grimaces shrink into grinning, His ruthlessness fades to bad breath. His rot had once fogged me with terror; Now his gnashing is rootless and blithe; His gargling grotesques are...

. . The Federal and the Doric The Federal and the Doric Combined a stern austere; They frowned upon the quad; They spread a healthy fear. Corinthian and Victorian Looked at the ground downcast; No one liked their whimsies; Their fancies would not last. . . Mars Mars, the stars...

  Pink has become a favored cultural color, more subtle, less primitive than red: black mixed with pink is considered seductive, innocent when used with white and acquired its own name just in the late 17th century it’s commonly read. In the 1940s, blue for boys, pink for girls became...

Aldeyjarfoss If, in some grim sensory exercise In a laboratory, behind a screen Where staunch technicians memorialize Their findings, everything we’ve heard and seen, Or smelled and tasted, or in our hearts felt As hope, an urgency to touch these walls Of snow and ice, as groaning glaciers melt, We...

Translations from Belarusian by the poet's son Ihar Kazak.    The Explosion May mayhem never strike our good Earth; The fertile one deserves tranquility and gratitude, So that on earth where in ruins weeds give birth, There would be no malevolent attitude. But evil— an explosion… Again a wormwood* spill....

  In the deep of the night do my restless thoughts roam ____To the moon-flooded fields of the sky, And they search for a pure and ethereal home, ____Where emotions and thoughts never die. Where the mountains and valleys of silvery cloud ____Are eternally calling to me, And the star-written...

  Out of the crooked timber laid by man, No straight foundation may ever be built. While Reason clinkers on across the span, The tunes of Sin jaunt forward with a lilt. To lie, to steal, to feel in ill no guilt, To follow Peter’s thrice denial there Before the...

“. . .  lest when thou hast eaten and art full  . . . then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt  . . .who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were...

After the above black and white photograph by Jared Carter Who alive remembers who lived there seventy years ago? A family of WASPs set in their ways? The leafless tree in front was just a sapling then. Despair did not weigh heavy on the owner’s brow, a man who paid...

a villanelle The sun descends into the silent sea. As shadows lengthen in the fading light I journey on to seek what yet may be. As death from life yearns to be free, And grief seeks comfort in the night, The sun descends into the silent sea. And as the...

Organ Harvest by Damian Robin, published by Fulton Verse, 2018. Read three sonnets from the work here.  by James Sale Damian Robin is well known to readers of the Society of Classical Poets web pages.  His poetry is frequently published there, as are his comments on others' poetry; and also, like...

Oak In quiet awe before a solid oak in summer bloom, I thought: to such as these my Saxon kin of long ago bespoke their pagan prayers—a source of great unease to Charlemagne, these heathens and their trees! He killed all those beyond baptism’s hope, Then celebrated Christmas with the...

My Soul awoke and yawned and stretched and pushed And seemed desired to break its earthly bounds Too anxious, I almost its Spirit crushed As birth pangs silenced all but sense’s sounds. Alive at last, it brushed away from eyes The blinding webs that Greed and Self had spun Released...

  My candle burns at both ends Late into the night, And flickers fast, And bounces in my sight. My pen lies docile in my hand. The page is silent now. My eyes transfix; My thoughts do mix; The flame moves like her gown. I see her sway In silken...

I. But yesterday, your noble fathers bled Upon the fields of France, where countless dead Had found among the vines their final rest, To gild with fame a venerated crest Whose princely brandishing from age to age Outlasted armies and the tyrant’s rage. But yesterday, you bravely fought and won...

  If seasons pass too fast you'd better run. If they proceed too slow indulge in fun. Sunups are best enjoyed in days of cold. Sundowns when heat waves linger fierce and bold. Old age returns all that you thought was lost. Except perennial snow and springtime frost. Dost thou...

Sail Fever I knew some terms, the merest germs Of illness called ‘Sail Fever’: Tack starboard, port, keep mainsail taut, Steer boat by tiller lever! One Saturday, beside the bay, A salesman full of running Cast practised spiel of salty zeal, Sheer confidence and cunning. He said, “This boat will...

The precious are so  easy to neglect: I let them down, my family and my friends. It’s futile if I offer my respect - Today is much too late to make amends. Nothing is left for me to do or say. The fact is:  my priorities were wrong. So much...

Where a lamppost spreads a white spot light Nursing silent night with canny purr, A racoon crosses there in sudden flight. Where an old man walks his dog this hour With a leash that’s buckled to his hand, The dog stands briefly pat in belled collar. Where a beggar sits...

Nova Scotia and the Clouds of Summer So silently they march along, the clouds of summer, proud and strong; their grand approach from yonder shore majestically they wander o’er. Not for the likes of me to know from whence they come, where e’er they go, for I am but a...

For Elizabeth My morning’s mountain wears the lavish light Of candid clouds and truth-engendered white. Ah, heavens, spread your opalescent ray, And open earth-blind eyes to boundless sight, That love abide beyond the close of day! And sip, O buds of May, the frigid dew! Grow fairer, earth, to our...

Alzheimer's Disease I can feel your deep darkness closing in, With its harrowing sense of helplessness, Soon obscenity sours tongues gathering; Havoc’s wrought by every hellish djin As chaos kicks aside your selflessness, Guilt, aplenty, glee guilds in fathering: Flaunting tones of stricken folk fail true faith, Whilst naught stands...

Runnymede Revisited Note: Runnymede is the location where King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This poem was written in the 1990s when the English nation was debating whether to join the European Union or not. “At Runnymede, at Runnymede What say the reeds at Runnymede? The lissome...

Bristlecone Longevity The beauty of the tree is not how old, Indeed how ancient in its gnarling now, Not in its silent history yet untold, Nor in the pre-historic roots and bough— Their age—but in its newness ever new, Its torqued refusal to be caught by death, Rejection of defeat...

Translator's Preliminary Note This is an original translation of a poem by Sappho (630-580 BC), traditionally known as the “old age poem” or the “Tithonus poem” (in the standard numbering by Lobel and Page, it is “Fragment 58”). Tithonus, mentioned in the poem, was a mortal whom the goddess Dawn...

Heritage I like to say I’d an Egyptian father If that is too obscure for you, I’d rather Explain it just by citing preservation. They preserved mummies, he his indignation At how the world had gone awry, once all Ethics, society had gone on stall. My father then stepped gingerly...

Poet’s Note: I wrote this poem in the same metrical form as the song “America the Beautiful” (but without the internal rhyme). You can sing it if you want, but I think it is most effective when simply read out loud. This year our nation’s birthday seems a tad bit...

Two Lives by Michael Maibach When soldiers die, They give two lives. The one they had, And the one denied. The spouse not met, The child unknown, The life unsaved, The welcome home. The hill unclimbed, The beach unseen, The books unread, The field un-gleaned. The chance to see Their...

Garden Waltz a terza rima sonnet in dactylic pentameter with a truncated foot at the end of each line Radishes sway to the rhythm of sunlight and rainfall, Carrots to minerals present in alkaline soil. Onions, however, invite a due process most painful, Opening eyes to the sting of their...

You pushed Grace hard so you could have your book. She did the layout, made the pdf. I bought the thing so I could take a look but, when I read it, I found blatant theft. You’d stolen poems from anthologies of poets who had won the Nobel Prize. You...

The Lord’s Supper They’re gathered round, astonished, full of dread, round him who like a wise man must decide, and who leaves those with whom he’s broken bread, and who comes like a stranger from outside. Old solitude haunts him, Gethsemane, though once it bound him to astounding acts; now...

The Fall Revisited The implications of the fall are endless in their reach; that lowly serpent had such gall, Eve's failure to beseech. Though what they chose when they did bite that infamous red fruit was bad enough for God to smite them; He withheld pursuit. Preferring then to extricate...

Guess who is not invited to come to a dinner here? Rights are just for some people. Others have to disappear. There is no bias in denials of our services; we shall not break bread with those who do not think just like us. Injustice anywhere's a threat to justice...

It's first of sweaty, sweltering daybreaks of summer new. The fewer trailing steps of parting spring are still moist-fresh with drakes' claw prints and redolent green pollen specks. The waters in the troughs and dew on leaves bid their tearful adieus with vapour-hands looking athwart through narrow foliar sieves at...

“Only fools are positive.”  “You sure about that?” “I’m positive.” ―The Three Stooges “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” "Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” “In a time of deceit telling the truth is...

  While strolling around an illustrious lair, I was caught by a breeze of regret in the air, For gazing I was on old buildings of stone, All graced with such courage and dignity their own, With worthy exploits and a mind once refined, These guardians of masses, once seeking...