Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Time to savor them all
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Street-Car Promenade
The clanging gong of midnight sounds.
Now trolleys, steaming hard and fast,
Their schedules filled, with hearty bounds
In panic rush to meet its blast,
Each car more eager than the last.
The day well done, the merry crew
At twelve each night hold rendezvous.
Evelyn Coffey
Monday, January 9, 2012
Thunderstorm in February
Broken
Are the winter-white skies,
Broken and desolate
Like my heart.
Beat, dull-fingered rain,
No-silver-singing rain,
Beat upon this heart’s blanched windows
Like multiple hammers
On an empty drum.
No tinkle in you now –
Flat now –
Stolen the music
On the rolling rim
Of each drop
Falling.
Sound, thunder!
Cut, lightening,
Sharp and shrill!
Cut like the sharp,
Shrill blade
Of a saw.
Make way for spring –
Carve a path in my heart
For spring –
Spring, throbbing
In sky as a room throbs
When a cello
Stops singing.
Burn me!
Burn winter’s shadows
From my heart.
Evelyn Coffey
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
To a Blackbird
Black- feathered sheaves that slap harsh air
with waving wings dart like spooks
through dismal, gray-spun skies, I watch
your silhouette with dainty flare
secreted on a dark-barked tree.
Your plumage melts in shadows deep
as night. Unsought and unobserved,
your glee may pour its mirthful cup
into the snow-drenched ground below,
or soar the heights of powdered dome,
cloud-barred from view. Abandonment
is yours. Envy is mine, whose wings
are bolted to earth’s stagnant clay.
Evelyn Coffey
Friday, January 6, 2012
The Secret Heart
Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.
In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.
Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.
The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.
He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.
His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.
He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,
A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.
It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.
One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.
But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.
Evelyn Coffey
Thursday, January 5, 2012
The Sea
To Fred W. Boltz, Lt. Com. U.S. Navy
The sea
Has a way of building a man . . . . .
The sea
With its deafening, massive span.
Out of the stillness . . . in the stark,
Dim spread of colossal dark,
The soul of a man has room to grow,
White
As the clean, white whip of the surf;
Right
As a ship’s sure cleft of the sea.
The sky
Has a way of molding a man . . . . .
The sky
With its winging, cloudy clan.
Out of the twisted winds, the wonder
Of lightning-laden strides of thunder,
The mind of a man has room to grow,
Wise
As the stars that cradled silence,
Eyes
Circling truth as gulls sight prey.
The soul
Has a way of finding a man . . . .
The soul
With its fearless, mystic plan.
Out of stardust and ocean foam,
Grinding clay and pregnant loam,
It shapes the noble heart of man,
True
As the sun that conquers shadows,
Blue
As the waves that burn in brine.
Salute this man of ocean’s making!
Drink him joy with singing lips.
Drink him joy with glasses breaking . . . . .
Master of men, and seas, and ships!
Evelyn Coffey