Category: Poetry

I.

I must have been four going
On five, a little wheat seed still
Sprouting in a sun-drenched
Red like the Four O’ Clocks out the
Side of our house on Evans Street.

You were trying to teach me
How to tie my shoes and I was
Lost in the tangle of strings. I started
Crying which made things worse,
Your patience curt as annoyance.

You finally huffed out the door
Driving mom to the grocery
Store leaving me there alone
With alligator tears mixed with,
“Dad, I can do it! I can do it!”

And I did.
But you were already gone.

 

II.

Joslin Lake is an outlier, its secluded
Silence from another time canopied
In a treasure of fire that rang
From the carillons of temerity –
We fished that lake every summer.

The three of us trolling for small
And large-mouth bass, a game of
Worm harnesses and lead sinkers as
I watched the tree line catch wind of
The clouds beyond a ceiling of rations.

Your antipodean stare at the
Surface of the water left me just as
Reflective yet breathless and alone.
Taught me patience married to
Anticipation a skill I keep trying to

Perfect on my way
To that corn husk gold horizon.

 

III.

We came to Stone Village Theater,
All my friends and I in Senior Year
Had front row seats on the edge of a
Thrust stage. Could smell the cologne
Of stage makeup we were so close to you.

With no proscenium we were part of the
Action in the midst of a comedy no play
Could embrace you better. My friends were
Awestruck at your delivery embodied by their
Genuine belly laughs as all of us were in tears.

To your stage left we sat there smiling as you
Played your part so well and none of us
Left without you signing their playbills – as I
Remembered you, just for a second, breaking that
Fourth wall to give me a split second of a nod

That you loved what you were doing –
And that you loved me as well.

 

© K. James Ribble

Captured
My heart cleaves the
viscous sweet glyptic
of your love
engraves the flow
of you towards
streams of diamond effluence
in the Forest of Overwhelm
as I lay down beside
mighty oaks I adore
the silvics of you.

 

© K. James Ribble

Ravaged insatiate
I speak with the birthright
Of stars, their veil of truth
Thin as crisp desire among
Thieves robbing my intuition
Of believing I can live
Without you – like a glance
Across an empty room filled
With doubt, it reliably seats
My appetite for us to remain
Draught to an admission
Of my own exorcism, a
Purging of fears that
Permeates this pinnacle
Of self-deception,
Lies in wait for its next
Victim a cross of benediction
This canon of our crisis
Lays firmly at the feet of
My thirsting love only for you.

 

© K. James Ribble

I’ve come back from the edge
A biting place unfit for human hearts
Grey clouds weep in undying sorrow
Cold and distant like the sound of snowfall
I search for you in longing measures
Paint hours of music from your eyes
Only to see the reflection of my loss
In a melody of abandoned lakes and lost dreams
It is as if myth becomes rebirth,
And each time all that I seek
Becomes protean vision of you
Ethereal and elusive like
Distant fog in October
And I see you in that vision, visceral
Prescience in a folding quilt of love
So as you lay your head lovingly
On my lap, the sounds of morning surround us
Becomes the envelope of my Gratitude
As I take your hand in mine.

 
© K. James Ribble

I walk the stage of downcast dreams
navigate my awareness of lost days
skirt coefficient boarders as both
life’s means and the operands of time

fray’s the glaze of mind-between
amenity of light becomes egersis
my Parthenon seeps self-knowledge
I become my own athenaeum this

wisdom of light and dark manifest
abolishing all their absolutes
beauty, truth, all good becomes lost
only to find my discovery fractured

cannot dis-earn dream from day
the Light of Self di-splays into facets
quiet diamond edge of knowing
of who I am and where I am going . . .

© K. James Ribble

cascade cradle of vision my mind
now a Coriolis Effect of light like
‘motion’s night-sky to the southern

ecliptic of summer’s eve – this
vast landscape of image now
flows over me as it falls to you

where on its verge, you emerge
forest Enchantress-
huntress of Life
holding untold prowess of heart
possessor of deepest love

you engulf me with the privilege
of your presence and I am witness to
a millennia of warmth washing over me

you raise your gaze towards my way
-and I see you-
between us there is nothing
but the stars.

© K. James Ribble

As if bound
to a collective chorus
our words sing to us
their bindings hand-stitched,
each one, to the leather
binding of our heart.

Beyond this serendipity of light,
all causeways to our own
self-assurance are caught unawares
by our words, a literary Cambridge
to the other side, so by chance,
the movement (of recognition) becomes
a soliloquy of timelessness.

This, our journey together, brings a
synchronicity of this same heart of
word-love – and it is this profound moment
of unity, as we sing our words together,
some will intersect in a choreography
of unison on the stage of our oneness
as we think, speak and write
in the same love together.
© K. James Ribble

Settle softly
The winds of thought,
My mind that is radiant you.
I bound in the
Harpsichord happiness of your words
On fresh water lakes
Strong and obedient
To the lightly searing music
Of your sun warmth…
So soft is the sound
Of emotions echo
Found in the deep lake woods
Near the shoreline wake
Of my subtle summer memory of you
And I remember:
Majestic is your face
That draws my heart in graphic harmony
Like the tide pull strength
Of your softly spoken smile.

 

© K. James Ribble

To the extent that
I can love you
– I surrender –
your name, now sacrosanct
(to call out to you now)
all nature beckons me
with you at its center
as if sunlight itself
soft as sateen and percale
object of my desire
all of my
love now
exposed to the sky
of your surroundings,
your ocean eyes of
Cayman blue enclose me
with salty confections
the same way your sensuous
waves of Cimarron hair
bestows your grace on me
all sustenance, that sacred site
of you framed like the
gardens of Versailles
– you –
a precious whole note
a calm flourish –
symphony of our love.

 
 

© K. James Ribble

An exegesis
indecorous
petroglyph of
my heart
mounted within time’s
Sepulcher of
the year now
gives way to a new
beginning a
cradle embodied
pericopes of
Reason and memory
-proclamations-
for me, for all.

 
© K. James Ribble