Sunday, January 27, 2008

Poem -- First Rain

Was out in The Shire again this weekend, helping The Luddites get their new shop set up. We worked in the rain, and in the snow. I was reminded of this poem I wrote almost 10 years ago when I was wiring new houses. [The formatting is more elaborate on my copy of this poem -- some day I'll have to learn how to introduce tab stops in HTML, but not tonight]

For The Luddites,





First Rain



Here it is --

Bright grey morning, almost warm.
Then sheets & sheets of rain pouring over this new roof.
First rain, introducing the long season.

Now, forests begin to smell like mushrooms,
elk stamp and steam in the cold trees.

This worksite smells of wet concrete,
wet flannel,
and cold feet.

These new houses are surrounded by moats of sticky mud,
extension cords smear it into hands & shirtsleeves
at the end of the day.

Apprentices complain,
and trout go off the bite.

Suddenly
candles at home,
hot meals,
and friendship

become startlingly more important
than long weekends and solitude.



('99 - '04)



Enjoy your artistic reminiscences,

Bp

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

*crowd goes wild*

Long live my bohemian/garuda friend's poetry!

Bpaul said...

HAha, coming from a twice over Utah State Slam Poetry champion, that's no small comment sir.

:-)

Anonymous said...

ahh the good ol' days. ;-)

I may have to dig up my Brandon poetry archives and give them a read again.

Bpaul said...

Those on papyrus? Or cuneiform?

Stu Farnham said...

Cave paintings.

Catherine Just said...

HEY! SO GREAT TO READ YOUR WORK AGAIN from the days I lived in Portland and went to your irradiated poets slam.....I remember orange jumpsuits and balloons.... Do post more BP - maybe we all need to dust off the old work and look at it with fresh eyes. This one is fabulous.

Bpaul said...

Stu's right they were cave paintings. He knows me so well.

I'm glad you liked that one C -- I really do need to figure out some more formatting in HTML.

You know what, I think I just solved my problem... you can save word documents in HTML. I can just format it on there, and save as HTML I bet.

Anyway, glad you liked it, and I'll throw in an occasional poem for ya. I don't have an enormous body of publishable work, so I'll be sparing. Plus, we don't want to scare away the new viewers haha (ZeFrank reference there).

Stu Farnham said...

BP,

Yes, you can save as HTML from Word. I've gotten tired of the vagaries of Blogger's editor and have started working that way.

Bpaul said...

Hey, watch the language buddy...

*guy uses the "v" word on my comments, insensitive lout, sheesh*

Heritage Natural Finishes (formerly Land Ark Northwest) said...

Thank you sir, very appropriate. Especially the cold feet. In fact, I'm not sure mine have warmed up even now.

BTW, we sat on I-5 for over 2.5 hours with that semi wreck. It was HAIRY getting home, and some areas were a white-out.

Anonymous said...

Very nice - thanks for the lift...va momma