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 

 

This Day, This Season

Grey day, November day.  The last holdout 

tree has let nearly all its leaves fall.

Its shadow a skeleton.  

I keep learning the lessons of seasons:

time’s illusionary stoppage,

my desultory notice not equal 

to the moment, my regret 

of the obvious.  The wrong desire 

for one season to go faster,

another slower when all that’s 

being asked of me is to take 

what is given.  I will try to take

this grey day, this November day

into me and turn the dreams 

of spring away.  “Not yet,” I whisper

like a secret promise that can’t be broken.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoetry.com

Once Again

The rain and wind have visited the trees

once too often -- the branches nearly bare.

The ground covered in leaves.  An IOU

Nature gives: what falls down rises again.

I say to my heart, “Hear that?” and I feel

the blood warm a bit, the pulse gets stronger.

My eyes and ears sharper, my soul freer

because of the barer trees, the wind against

the house: a library of memories, dreams,

the feathering of time and eternity 

into one another as I say, “Here now,

always now” smile at such a truth, such

a lie.  Such is life.  This falling and rising,

this blurring of seasons – no ends, no beginnings.

-Byron Hoot

hootnhowlpoety.com  

Baptism

Sometimes I feel the streams of memory

overflowing the banks of any containment

I have erected to keep past dreams and desires

from flooding me for forty days and nights. 

Water is not my element and it holds creatures

deep within me I do not know I can defeat 

the way Beowulf once did in that sea that 

has become a metaphor and so much more

dangerous.  I worry how the past has a strength 

that can exceed the moment, a dance that will

not be forgotten, a touch the heart still longs for.

“There’s nothing but now,” I remind myself 

as if a lie like that can change the truth

and see the waters rise and consider the nature

of baptism – standing in the river, priest or 

priestess beside me, one hand on my back, one hand

over my mouth, nose squeezed shut and my arms

crossed.  The words spoken, the submersion, my 

wet, sputtering reply as my eyes open.  The brothers

and sisters of the deep having marked me

and I walk on the water to the shore forever dripping

with that knowledge I can’t speak of, forever 

its essence in inarticulate splendor within me. 

The fear of drowning gone.

-Byron Hoot

 hootnhowlpoetry.com. 

Grendel Upon Hrothgar

I have heard you play the harp 

and sing when the spirit of the Shaper

has entered you and know your songs

of victories and defeats, trust and betrayal

is our story cast on other characters 

in another time.  You cannot sing the song

of here and now and yet you cannot be 

silent.  A pleasing voice.  Tales well-told

and the magic of words has sometimes held

me long enough outside the walls of Hart

Hall for me to cast a reprieve for the night,

a weakness of mine, a refusal to attack.

I go back and leave no sign of my visit;

you know nothing how the words

have moved me, those shared memories

that have made us more than brothers,

those shared memories that have made 

our lives our story – king and monster,

the curse of each and each of us seeking

some kind of victory or defeat to hear

the final verse repeated and the echo

of a final note.  I, too, play and sing

but unheard by anyone.  No-one pounds

tables, calls for mead; I have no hall 

but yours and when I do sing there all 

you hear are screams, the songs of death

you taught me, O brother, O king, hee, hee, hee.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Waking

I opened my eyes and saw first

light and closed my eyes 

wanting a dream to take me 

into the day.  None came so

I got up to look into the mist

of last night’s rain seeking 

something vaguely familiar

like a fallen feather from 

an Angel’s wing, a bear track

glittering with gold dust,

the blues intertwined

with a hymn, some sign of damnation

and salvation and beauty in a seamless

robe, a seamless story, a poem 

with metaphors of love human-and-divine,

bodies as wineskins holding the elixir

of life.  I saw nothing then looked 

at this page and saw I’d seen everything

I was looking for – even the one I 

made no mention of.

-Byron Hoot

https://hootnhowlpoetry.com

Piles of the Morning

Origins of faint sore dust looms in drinking waste

Pockets pretending under soft vigils

Gifts of seeking tundras

Miles of ready tides

Rusty leaves and tired mansions of truth wander into herds left blind

Auroras deny bottled meaning

Tired of want

Ready for rest

Eastern doors making dancing dens

Proper spaces where open coins fall into trance and milk

Piles of the morning

-Cory Tambourine

https://mothlightva.weebly.com