FIVE POEMS BY DUANE VORHEES

FIVE POEMS BY DUANE VORHEES


AND JUST WHEN I THOUGHT THE EARTH WAS TURNING COLD

– all the ancient fields of my youth, the sweet meadow
– just when my old shepherd’s head was a-going sheeplike itself
– snowy, poor-sighted, far too slow
– then and just then
– that new lamb came into the fold.

And the earth turned over again, and no more old.

NO CROSSWISE STRIPES

Oh, Orh, that first spontaneous smile in the night:
I was lost and didn’t know it, and
then
your beacon
found me
and now
I walk with no bear tracks beneath my feet
and no coyote in my path.
No eclipse darkens my meal.
No snake sheds in my sight.
And I can spend hours filling your well with a stone.

BETWEEN TWO SUNS

One more melanoma day
ends itself in ash and cinder.
Our crisp souls, clichéd
to yet another auto-da-fé
to competitive conformity.
But (just now starting)
we mount our nocturnal bucket brigade,
begin passing forth and back
these cool liquids of our life

from one to the other,
refill and back again,
refill and back again
between two suns.

DOUBT AND REASSURANCE

"With all the wonder you have won
--O you, who took my summers' sum --
will now you win my winters too
or spend my age on agile youth?"

"The seas flow. Seasons flower.
But I delight in my idol."

CAKE'S CONSUMED, CANDLE'S EXTINGUISHED, BALLOONS POPPED OR DEFLATED

This is the first day
of the last year
of my sixth decade.
The best weather, has it passed?

The days of the new moon aren't done.
There are kisses to come yet
and tequila worms to swallow.


And thus, I turn off the pensive lights.

DUANE VORHEES

After years of wandering and, when necessary, working at a variety of tasks,  Duane Vorhees spent a couple of decades teaching for the University of Maryland in Korea and Japan. Now in retirement in Thailand and the US he is writing more often than in the past while formalizing the publication of his work. His 1st American collection, THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES: LOVE's AUTOBIOGRAPHY: THE END OF LOVE was published by Hog Press in August 2019 and is available in bookstores and on Kindle; an audio version is in the works and will soon be available on Amazon and iTunes. He is currently at work on a 2nd volume, GIFT. A translation of Korean poems is also in preparation.

He is the man in the centre.



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