Dickens Got It Right

Christmas is a spirit-filled time of year. 

If we only dream but once a year, this

is the time of dream, of nightmare,

transformation of time by eternity.

The gifts we buy mockeries of the gift

we are to give – ourselves unwrapped,

freely given, freely to receive.  Not any

part of us left under any Christmas tree.

Giving gifts that do not satisfy is exhausting,

the clean-up afterwards weary the heart and soul.

The haunting feeling we have withheld

the best gift once again – I-am-you-you-are-me

and the music and dancing – 

“Gloria, Gloria, Gloria,” the song we love to sing.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

That Last Arrow

I am going back in memory and, therefore, time

to the first inklings of love at church camp

in Summersville, West Virginia.   Where those

sermons and songs and testimonies of love

and hell and forgiveness and salvation 

prepared my heart and body for love.

Where stolen, hidden kisses and caresses

were proof of Cupid’s arrows hitting the mark,

Venus whispering, pointing, “There.  There.”

And dreams I never knew I could have appeared.

The years of falling in and out of love,

the word “forever” echoing, the tastes of lips,

the scent of love, the touch forever new.

Days, weeks, months feeling like years.

Beginnings and endings blurred as if 

the time too fast to hold, one heart entering

another – the sheer ignorance of love.

Then the arrow that would not shake loose.

Venus saying, “That’s enough.”  Love and

life and poetry mixing, mixing, mixing

until recollection and reflection settled in.

That last arrow I still lovingly touch.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

The Question

The Question

. . . and if someone would ask,

“What do you think most of?”

I’d answer, “Time and love.”

Two facts, two magics each 

unfixed in their expression,

the nature of their forms kaleidoscopic,

their certainty confirmed

by the inability to leave either alone.

And may, I feel, contain all 

other mysteries.  I have the blessing 

and curse of solitude in which such

considerations are as certain as 

the fact that I face east every morning.

That I await the light then shadows,

that memory and desire are braided

into now, that the sickle of time 

and the bow and arrows of love

I know.  One always leaving,

one always arriving, a sigh

that sounds like OM.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Hootism:  The technology for finding who we are is hardship and love.  Everything else is child's play. 

The Last Tight Curve

I am exploring time as if I don’t 

know what it is and I don’t.

I am trying to make distances

deeper by slowing down, the instances

of curves and straightaways 

not places to get beyond but what may

be lingered in by seeing ahead, around

with a vision and heart and soul sound

with the detritus of time cast aside 

like leaves along the roads I ride

with other purposes than a way to get

me to where I’m going now a way to let

me be where I am heading in the right

direction, destination known when the last tight

curve is in the rearview 

and I know something of time I never knew.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Green In The Face by Cory Tambourine

From Artist Cory Tambourine
http://mothlightva.weebly.com