Category: Poetry

Copper of the Upper Peninsula
Served as a primary color, the palette
Paints the caverns of iron across my young boy’s mind;
A calico of adolescent travesties chasm the rise
In the burnt brown waters of the Fence.
Memories of this place reek of my childhood so innocent
Not even the conifers could redeem my purity of heart
There aside the clear natural effluence of the river’s bed.
I Learned to tie my first Duff and Nymph while the lure
Of the river remains almost like a limb of my soul
Keeping branches of the summer sun to stream its
Yellow light across freckled face and sky-blue eyes.
That one morning we hiked upstream on a path
Thriving in moss, the rattlesnake fern so abundant we
Walked careful as deer not to slice our waders. We launched at
The Three Sisters, pines tall as the sky, who were waiting for us
To begin our day while the trout laughed at us, bellies aching.
My first brownie struck the lure so hard I nearly leapt clear
Out of the water with excitement as my neighbors laughed.
The beauty of his iridescent coat was matched only by
Way of my Tears of sorrow for gutting and cleaning him
As that afternoon’s lunch. It was as though I needed to thank
Him for his loss while I watched the breading, the heat of
The fryer whispering to me of his plea: “Do not cry for me
Young boy, You are mine now, forever.”

© K. James Ribble

Photo: @d3imagery / http://www.d3imagery.rocks/
Tahquamenon Falls – Paradise, Michigan

Ardent rain grasps
Hold of Autumn clouds, a
Panacea of lost thoughts
To my Heart of Changes.

© K. James Ribble

Motionless lies the soft summer day;
And as the morning dew
Slowly loses its battle with the sun,
You come to me like the Summers Friend…
Joyously, you and I walk the earth’s
Soft green fields and fill the cool
Woods with our laughter.
We murmur of days to come
And how we must ride
The Circle of Life.
I embrace your amber body;
We watch the magenta sun set
As evening brings you closer to me.
 
© K. James Ribble

There simply are no other
Excuses
Maudlin characters that they are
To justify my heart gone awry
These alibi actors upstage each other
Shed my Torment like
Crackling paint on the eaves of my suspicions
Crisping jingoism in the August sun
I cannot linger here
For these reasons
Any longer
(And so I must find my way
Cast into this world)
Even my own mystics cite too many pleas
Castigation’s mitigation of my own divinity
Set Against a pretext to personal freedom
I can never find.

© K. James Ribble

As I come
Closer and closer
To my destination
I see a clarity
Unfold
Revealed in twilight
Splendor
Like
Garden Rain
On Vermillion Flowers
The warmth
So incomparable
It gives to me
The stability of Life
I have always sought
Not unlike the
Sun that seeks
Solace among
Other crimson stars

© K. James Ribble

Snow music falls silent
Among the crisp dew
Waiting for night
Inside the foyer of God.
Cathedral echoes are heard
Down long halls that smell of oak
Of kings and queens as Songs
Attend to the snowdrifts outside.
I approach this castle, my memory
Hearing quiet melodies of time,
Sing canticles of my ancestors
Vetted to a confluence of light
Attracted by each to a
Curtain call of immortality
Between the stars of heaven
And my heart.
 
© K. James Ribble

Passage to thought a
Missing sign of mastery unhinged

Across the riverbed where

Calculus of emotion cannot evolve
Too quickly lest we loose

Composure of horizon’s edge.

© K. James Ribble

She’s like fire inside me
Anchored to the core of my own daylight

Forever unannounced by my heart’s
Recourse so that her presence is always a surprise.

Her senescence is revoked by the mists that
Cast a lovely spray of color across the bow

Of my Honesty thus I cannot approach her
Without the vulnerability of my soul exposed

So I inhale her every thread of empathy
As Sunlight dances to the smile of her gaze

Like her laughter that fills each breath I take the
Unguent jeopardy of my approaching arms

Cannot diminish the highlands of our oneness
The setting sun of our lovers embrace.

 

© K. James Ribble

– Inspired by the music of Phillip Wilkerson
‘Sweet Eva Lena’ on Highlands

We think we know how to go along
When in fact we are in constant moment-to-moment
I look behind me all those years ago
And see a man who knew no fear

Not because anxiety did not register but
Because an Aurorae of Innocence enveloped me
Like a chrysalis, the placenta of life
Embracing me in a warmth still natal

With known unknowing

I grieve for that man
The loss oft times gets the best of me
I clamor for his youth and vitality
Knowing his naivety was not his fault

A fore-ward glance at the moments ahead
Cannot contain my consolation
Of leaving him on the steps of his own critique
Cantilevered to the bedrock of his reckless curiosity
To just let him go.

 
© K. James Ribble