new posts in all blogs
Viewing Blog: Crackles of Speech, Most Recent at Top
Results 1 - 25 of 148
children's/ya books, comics, animation, poetry, prose, new media, etc.
Statistics for Crackles of Speech
Number of Readers that added this blog to their MyJacketFlap:
Bus Stop in December
My mailbox wears a cap of snow.
A cardinal plays its feather:
Morning’s ruddy fluff
In whiteout weather.
It’s cold enough
To shape the breath I blow.
I rub my palms together.
By night it will be three below.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Happy Thanksgiving from Cape Cod!
Long-Ago MemoryBy Steven Withrow
Near the cranberry bog
Where we walked our dog
Morning and evening,
Even in snow,
Where we came to look out
At bog-berries growing
All tinges of red,
My grandmother said,
“Keep this in mind:
Look long enough,
You’re sure to go blind
To such red-as-can-be.
It’s much better to see
Just a hint of the view
Or you’ll find out that you
Can’t tell crimson from white.”
And I knew she was right.
Then she walked on ahead
By an ocean of red,
Rubied waves to a shore,
And we said nothing more.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
I love Robert Francis’s poems, and his “The Sound I Listened For” (click the link to read it) is an unrhymed hexameter sonnet with 14 six-beat lines, a very challenging form and measure to have sound natural when pentameter (lines with five strong stresses) is so ubiquitous in English. Here’s my attempt at something similar, a memory from the years I commuted to Boston:
Strange Pavement
Young girls or geometric punks drew hopscotch squares
Across this stretch of pavement where I walk to work
Most mornings from the train. It must have been at dawn,
Or maybe overnight, before the early joggers
Scattered the chalk and scuffed away the double cross.
They left no names, forgot to scribble numbers in
Each block, so something might have interrupted them.
I keep on using plurals, but the they could be
A she, a he, a street artiste outside alone
Kneeling and making perfect squares in purple chalk
By flashlight as a code, or as a dare to us:
A bottle cap, a rock, is all you need to play.
I toss a dime and jump five spaces to retrieve it,
Then leave it there so someone else can take a turn.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
P.S. Here's a link to a great radio recording of Robert Francis reading his poems. My admiration goes to Henry Lyman for producing these radio shows for two decades in Amherst, Massachusetts.
This short lyric is a mix of memory and imagination. It is also an homage to Robert Frost, whose work I've been reading closely. Thought it out for two weeks, wrote it in two hours. Hope you enjoy.
Beach Road Fox
An ocean fog brings foxes out by day,
And, driving home, I scare one on its way
To meet a rabbit for an early meal,
A splotch of rust the light’s too dim to name
True red, its tail a curve of orange peel
Or the guttering appendage of a flame.
For spotting one, it’s not as if I oweMore than a look, but nearer now I slow
The car to watch it disappear among
The beach rose bushes there along the road
(A fox’s only debt is to its young)
In loping imitation of a toad.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Eating the Sky
This sky I cannot tasteBut how I might—
If I had a mouth
To swallow
North
West
East
And South—
Partake of
Such
Bright
Blue
This sky I can’t ingest
But if I grew
Famished
Enough
I might just try
One wedge
Of cloud
And half
A moon
For breakfast—
Wouldn’t
You?
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
You can hear me read the poem aloud by clicking here.
Advice from the Field
In building a house
Of modest estate,
Abode for the mousy,
Not for the great,
Be prim as a mouse is
Selecting her lot;
No good to build houses
In a trouble spot.
Mice find it best
To make like a mole:
If short a nest,
Inhabit a hole.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
You can hear me read the poem aloud by clicking here.
Trespasser
Black bear climbed the fence behind the store
And lumbered toward the garbage bin.
Mother of two,
She’d had to let her hunger win
Against the cautious hollow at her core.
Night clerk, out for a smoke, had tossed a box
Of sausage pizza—a tiny sliver,
But it would do
Till morning when they reached the river,
So she tried to thunder softly as a fox.
Tranq dart struck her cleanly in the leg.
It took three more to bring her down.
The shooter knew
Bleak need had led her close to town,
For a black bear out of luck can hardly beg.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Trespasser
Black bear climbed the fence behind the store
And lumbered toward the garbage bin.
Mother of two,
She’d had to let her hunger win
Against the cautious hollow at her core.
Night clerk, out for a smoke, had tossed a box
Of sausage pizza—a tiny sliver,
But it would do
Till morning when they reached the river,
So she tried to thunder softly as a fox.
Tranq dart struck her cleanly in the leg.
It took three more to bring her down.
The shooter knew
Bleak need had led her close to town,
For a black bear out of luck can hardly beg.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
I don't think I'd want a bear's life, but I empathize with them. We'll be seeing more and more large predators in places we don't expect, and I hope that doesn't result in us never seeing them at all.
Trespasser at Qwik-Mart
Black bear climbed the fence behind the storeAnd lumbered toward the garbage bin.
Mother of two,
She’d had to let her hunger win
Against the cautious hollow at her core.
Night clerk, out for a smoke, had tossed a box
Of sausage pizza—a tiny sliver,
But it would do
Till morning when they reached the river,
So she tried to thunder softly as a fox.
Tranq dart struck her cleanly in the leg.
It took three more to bring her down.
The shooter knew
Bleak need had led her close to town,
For a black bear out of luck can hardly beg.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
I don't think I'd want a bear's life, but I do empathize with them. We'll be seeing more and more large predators in places we don't expect, and I hope that doesn't result in us never seeing them at all.
Trespasser at Qwik-Mart
Black bear climbed the fence behind the storeAnd lumbered toward the garbage bin.
Mother of two,
She’d had to let her hunger win
Against the cautious hollow at her core.
Night clerk, out for a smoke, had tossed a box
Of sausage pizza—a tiny sliver,
But it would do
Till morning when they reached the river,
So she tried to thunder softly as a fox.
Tranq dart struck her cleanly in the leg.
It took three more to bring her down.
The shooter knew
Bleak need had led her close to town,
For a black bear out of luck can hardly beg.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
After reading that the fisher, a kind of weasel, is one of the porcupine's few predators, I wrote about human beings and survival of the fiercest:
Close Combat
Even at peace
We flex our wills,
Fisher circling
Porcupine,
Certain what kills,
Marten and prey,
Is striking a place
(Belly or face)
Bare of quills:
Armistice—yet
Whetting our skills.
© 2016 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Image Credit: Painting by Consie Powell from Kays and Wilson's Mammals of North America, © Princeton University Press (2002)
You can hear me read the poem aloud by clicking this link.
This week's POETRY FRIDAY is hosted by Carol Wilcox at Carol's Corner.
Ah, lively, deadly life! With Zika and other viruses on the rise, I've heard many variations on "The only good mosquito is a dead mosquito." As frightening as the health threats are, the closer I look, the more I find to admire about these graceful, resilient creatures.
 |
| Mother Culex quinquefasciatus (southern house mosquito) with her egg raft |
Mosquito Season
Mother fends off
Net and swatter,
Hovers over
Standing water
Where she works
Her subtle craft,
Conjures up a
Cradle-raft
Made of eggs,
Laid with care
In the hollow
Of a chair
Puddled by a
Passing storm—
Perfect place to
Raise a swarm.
 |
| Aedes mosquito larva |
This week's POETRY FRIDAY is hosted by Julie Larios at The Drift Record.
National Poetry Month has brought me and my "Syllable Sounds" presentation to schools and libraries across my home state of Massachusetts. Here are a few pics from my visits!
This week I'm launching Poetry at Play, a weekly video series on YouTube that will feature poems by me and others, as well as mini-lessons on craft. Check back each week, share the link, and please subscribe to the channel. (Next week we'll film in landscape mode.)
Congress Avenue, Austin, Sunset
Free-tailed bats go dropping from the bridge
And sorting into swarming patterns. Clouds
Of tiny black ambassadors, a smidge
Sonoran, chiropteran, gently clash
Like Iceland’s vulcan vagabonds of ash.
This evening’s bat attraction tempts no crowds
In Sixth Street bars. Few cars. A camera-flash
Lights up a tourist couple, beetle-broweds
From overseas who stare beyond the ridge
Of the overpass, at creatures past the edge
Of all they used to know. Below, a splash
As one bat nabs a bug or biting midge
Off Lady Bird Lake. Floating trash
Cheapens the view, which loses color. Loud’s
Each homing shriek. Night echoes, enshrouds.
© 2015 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Refugee Camp
Mama held my hand
As we walked on small hills
Toward a border town.
Papa wore a frown.
The baby had the chills,
And this was a foreign land.
Racket of hammers and drills
From shelters built on sand,
Tents of muddy brown.
Families stuck like stills
In a scrapbook. A crown
Of sun, a cold command.
So tired he couldn’t stand,
Pa laid the baby down
To rest. He’d brought no pills
And couldn’t speak a noun
To a nurse in a Red Cross band
Who tried to judge our ills.
He whispered, “Understand:
It’s not this war that kills,
But begging in a border town.”
© 2015 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Running Away
Early I woke, and early walked outside.Up before birds, I should have been in bedAnd not in darkness, trying my best to hideFrom spooks in woods. I took the road instead.Eleven years had taught me how to climbOff gravel onto bristly grass. A carCould swerve and run me over any time.My house was gone. I’d never walked that far.First birds. Two crows picking apart a mole.I stopped and tossed a stick. Cawing, they flewJust feet away. I scratched a shallow holeAnd there I nudged the creature with my shoeThen covered it in brush. Ahead my trackWas barred with sun. I broke and started back.
© 2015 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
City in Winter
Cabbies holler from yellow toboggans,
“Uptown, downtown—where to, Mac?”
Huskies tug them over slush piles,
Sixteen mushed mutts to a pack.
Sidewalk vendors deal in shovels.
Shop signs lend a neon glow,
Blue, to ice-encrusted buses
Budged like bison through the snow.
Bundled children riding reindeer
Race from block to block. A bear
Has blundered out of hibernation
Snarling up the thoroughfare.
A parliament of snowy owls—
There!—awakes and shares a perch:
A fire escape where I am watching,
A street across from a buried church.
© 2015 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
BIG NEWS: My first collection of poems, CRACKLES OF SPEECH, is now available for purchase (along with a preview) at this secure link through Lulu.com.
This book is a gigantic milestone for me -- more than a decade of work and play -- and I am grateful for your support!
Names of Animals
Rhodesian ridgeback,
Indonesian crested black macaque,
Scaly-tailed tree pangolin,
Canary Island peregrine,
Himalayan horned domestic yak.
Bearded Arctic seal,
Purple riverine spaghetti eel,
Hairy long-nosed armadillo,
Yukon Territory blue-winged teal.
©2014 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Spider is a master
of espionage.
She leads a life
of secrecy
and sabotage.
Patient spider,
plain-sight hider,
eavesdrops
down her
subtle thread.
She’s a lover
of the undercover,
and any bug
to cross her
winds up dead.
©2014 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
Dogsense
I’ve never pinsched a Doberman
Or whipped a whippet’s tail.
I’ve never trailed a Saint Bernard
To find the Holy Grail.
I’ve never knocked a boxer out
Or bored a borzoi’s brain,
But I’ve endured soliloquies
From Hamlet, my Great Dane:
“To die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance
To dream; ay, there’s the rub.”
And oh, the thousand natural shocks
When he doesn’t get his grub.©2014 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
When I see a V
of Canada geese
I picture it as
a single piece
of a larger shape,
first letter in a word
spelled out southerly
bird by bird.
V is for vivid,
velocity,
vicissitude,
victory,
vociferous,
vertigo,
visitors from
vales of snow,
a vanishing
vocabulary,
vaporous,
or is it very
vigorously
visionary?
©2014 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
View Next 25 Posts
Cardinals! One of my childhood favorites. Love your lines "It’s cold enough
To shape each breath I blow—" That is just too cold.
"whiteout weather" - now that is indeed, something.
We have the sun the whole year round here in Singapore, with our tropical climate. Glad to read about all these white wintry stuff so unfamiliar to us.
Brr! I need a blanket over my knees after reading your poem. Very evocative of winter.
I wish we had cardinals. They are so beautiful. I love "ruddy fluff" and the mailbox wearing a cap of snow.
Love winter and the poems they bring.
Brr!!
Thanks, all!