For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

Yet here again I reference Wallace Stevens’ “mouse in the wall” and also another poem of his “The Man with the Blue Guitar.” This was the last poem of the poetry reading I did back in 2004.

Poetry
 
It all starts with an ocean of words
cascading,
      wind chimes carrying across 
suburban streets stray thoughts,
counterintuitive.

I want my Sundays back,
no baby back ribs
      to stir my dreams,
and the will power to organize
this life into some semblance of
simple.  

It's not that he minds the clutter
as much as 
       the appearance of clutter,
it's what it appears his life is,
what can be viewed by
a passerby like that glance, half-
glare, caught from a passing car.

Or the kids in the back of the bus 
giggling, snickering 
at those who follow too close
what they say to each other
about the middle-aged
man in car, beat-
up car. It's all
self-referential.

**

Except for the man
with the blue guitar
who strums beside
the white lake 
in winter,
his fingers 
flow over 
the frets 
intuitively.
(It all comes back
to Wallace
and the mouse
in the wall,
doesn't it?)
This mystery
for a moment
becomes clear
or not.

***

It was like one day in sixth grade
when you looked up
and the world became
blue,
tinted your 
perspective on
everything.
 
The reds
disappeared
for a while
but are back
now
in crimson,
maroon,
vermilion.

Now you become a chameleon
rising out of
the dust
until the colors
diffuse
out across your horizons
into your dreams.

Listen, the wind chimes.

The above poem is best read in desktop and landscape to preserve the integrity of the line breaks as I intended, especially in the first part of the poem.

Instead of leaving you with a poem from one of the three sites as I have been doing, I will refer you to Stevens’ poem aforementioned.