Rob Ganson
A stream flows from the Loon Lake of my mind
(For Pat Dinnen)
It requires no particular place to flow,
no respect from the land it feeds, no song of itself for ungrateful ears.
It cannot be damned by merchant or scoundrel,
by grasping claws of those who cannotinherit the magic of the moon, the clarity,
the wisdom of water tumbling over the smooth
stone of time.The paintings I sing, the vistas of poetry I paint,
the story that tells me, line the banks like
wildflowers that usurp a neglected park.All seasons reside along this rhythmic ribbon of thought, this stream of consciousness.
If you listen, you can hear your spirit sing
like my loon, my coyote, my laughter and tears.
There is a bend on this chromium path,
where sunrise kisses each mourning
with a hopeful mouth, hungry for you,
where a forever stone creates an eddy
that defines peace with silent song.
Can you hear the ripples, from the stone
I have tossed for you? This is the place
light goes to play with water and time is not.
This morning, I built you a bench there.
It is not an ordinary bench.
It will take you to your own stream, lift you
from unwanted time, place, and company.
This bench can fly.
Dear Walt
by Rob Ganson
I love your love for my glorious land,
its rivers, its farmyards and verdant hills,
the way your words caress a callused hand,
the bright spirit America distills.
I admire your electric body,
your gentleman's touch on a fevered brow,
and the way you wrote was not too shoddy!
I wish I wrote so well, but don't know how.
I can't claim any interest in your loins,
or that my fantasy involves a kiss,
but true love can grow deeper than our groins.
A life without your verse would be remiss.
I never wrote a love song for a man,
but loved you since my lust for words began.
The Red-Headed Stepchild, and other Myths
Warm is the allure of a red-haired lass
with freckled catfish skin so soft,
and those eyes that twinkle like azure glass,
their hair - spun fire - reaching aloft.
Carrot-top lads dare dream to reach higher,
as if spirit raises them high above
those drab-hued boys that so raise their ire
with their misconceptions of love.
See, those lithe and gentle folk, topped with flame,
are grist for creation's vast wheel,
the singers, the painters, who make their names
of stronger stuff than mere steel.
Toast the red-headed comrade or lover,
with new realms of warmth to discover ...
raise a glass to that red-haired lad or lass.
Valentine for a Friend
I have a friend who mends my words with grace,
who attended as those first verses stirred.
He taught me to wrap my phrases in lace,
to sharpen the images that I blurred.
He led me to a heart outside myself,
to write sun for a lady trapped in dark,
to wield my pen like a verbose elf,
to help her weary spirit fly like larks.
It is thanks to him that my sonnets fly
in the winds, the idiot winds of now,
that now and then my pointed pen complies
as if the sonnet’s structure is my Tao.
The poems that I write, the words I bend
owe much to the tutelage of this friend
2011
The wolves have gathered in Washington’s aisles
to feast on herds of blind and silent sheep.
Hidden in the lies of those bloody smiles
innocent bones gleam, and peasants sleep.
The cupboard is bare and the mortgage, due,
but the vultures still thirst for working men.
They steal from the many, give to the few
feast on our children, and send them again
to kill in the desert, to kill for oil
as if the whole world is theirs to pillage,
and as the serpent’s seven lengths uncoil,
rubble and smoke mark another village.
Seeing another soldier’s floral wreath
I wonder if it's time the sheep grew teeth.
Now
The moment was not, it seems, born to hold -
as pregnant now never fully gestates.
Static protagonists try to unfold
tomorrow as the very “it” abates.
I am, I know, the past's own abductee,
who struggles to pry now and then apart,
but present hides, and I, an amputee,
must try to find my way bereft of chart.
A particle of time, fleeting, wary,
is sought headlong, an effort to distill
the bliss of today, to meet and parry
tomorrow's thrust with momentary thrill.
This very instant, fleeting and arcane
lives despite proofs of yesterday's remains.
