plum cipher

plum cipher

before you bloom
be like rock on fire    inside earth
first    fire    of all that blooms

before you bloom
be like sea    emerald mother’s    eye
womb    like threads inside

before you bloom
be like laying    sleeping stone
weathered    like gracious thought    generous

before you bloom
be like respiration    green    fingers    brows
beside the road    still while movement    abounds

before you bloom
be like bark    tan bleached    arms
like a ladder is    into limbs    receiving light

before you bloom
be like ocean’s blue    in mirror glass
be like wind    like rain    like dazzle moon    like

before you bloom
be like fusion bright    marry dark    and sight
amalgamate photon synthesis    seedling like

before you bloom
other’s feet will trample on    fingers    toes
and you will bloom    anyway    endlessly

because your are fire water rock sky womb
bare as the god who would be your breath

neil reid © april 2010

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Sunday, Montano de Oro

Sunday, Montano de Oro

It was something about Thor and wings and dreams

I think, scribbled on a notebook page, a week’s old

theme I supposed adultly poetic enough

yet a breath or few away from angst

There was a drawing too I’d made and that part

at least real enough for a lingering youth about to be

considerably older, and soon enough

They were months of fat indulgence, excused for waiting

back in that small college town only partly on my own

No studies and a bright red-white pickup truck outside

so a Sunday morning was all in my hands for wandering

wheels to arrive, Montano de Oro, more than seemed

And right as my feet sloshed through sand, climbed

the far highland bluffs above some ocean called

Pacific even when it wasn’t

And yellow warmed the shelf of brush and mesquite

giving up the clothes of their scent, blending in the bowl

with wet salt from pillared sea bluffs below

A place where minor gods stood in my imagination

shallow beside unrealized passion unspent, outlined

in sea weathered stone, and you could understand

Why earth adores the sun, put down roots, walk that trace

along the cliffs, till just ahead, what low scrub had first hid,

a bobcat licking morning paws

Suppose he could have done me some harm,

or I to him as well, but we just looked then looked

away into brighter day, each path undisturbed

Till home and someone wants to send me far and farther,

an ocean Asian war away, a pain already too much realized

And in the end of that day, I refused to go

Neil Reid © March 2010

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Finding freedom brothers

Finding freedom brothers

Marineros en el mar, hay una regla
usted viene ayudar alguien.
Pero ese día ellos no vinieron.

Until that day I jumped into the water

and left my home. Left my best friend.

Left everything.

Everything, sadness was one drop

of my heart, and I walked into the sea.

One could hardly believe.

One could barely breath.

It was crowded in the sea, lots of fish.

We crowded into a boat, hardly dry.

Thirst came with me onto the sea.

But it wasn’t about water, you must

understand. How to quench a heart!

Why I was on the boat on the sea,

why I was myself become another

face. Does horizon see me yet?

Will you come? Sit table with me.

Break this bread upon our lips,

taste salt and tears and a brother’s

love. Dare surrender stones?

The sea is not wider than this.

Here, leap with me!

neil reid © december 2009  revised & amended july 2011

translation:
Sailors at sea, there is a rule
someone comes to help you.
But they did not come that day.

Commentary:
This poem was written in response to a documentary on the lives of two brothers, two Cuban brothers.  Each loved family. One who found right home where he was.  Another who felt his best right expression could only bloom in another land.  Yet neither respective nations really allowed this difference to be easily addressed.  For the one it meant leaving brother, leaving family, and risking all on a short but perilous travel across the sea.  He did ultimately safely arrive, however a price of distance was indeed paid by both.

Eventually the brother who remained in Cuba did find the opportunity to come and briefly visit his brother in the United States; and well evident despite all distances, brotherhood did remain intact.  But such a price (why do we do this to ourselves?) both brothers had to endure.

And yes, for this poem I did take the sea crossing as allegory for something more about relationship and our “environment of nations” that do or do not support who we are at root as family.

At heart they took no sides, and neither do I, except for compassion and care and freedom to be as we honestly are.

technical note:
If you have not used it as yet, Google does provide a very useable language translation facility (as used here to write the leading poetic phrases).

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Seaside

Tuned, more simple word.  ver.2

 

Seaside

 

A wave arrives, froth fingers

raking amber sand.  Seaweed

beyond that sash.

 

We fascinate ourselves as

by a slight of wave, movement

does.

 

The magician’s glove perhaps

is wearing us.  Best kept

family recipe.

 

Do we inform the sea?

As a bow does sketch our

course.  Illuminate.

 

Navigate from home to home.

Swim into mother’s mouth.

 

Another summer season beach.

 

 

Neil Reid © October 2009

 

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Flying cloud

Flying cloud, an ocean swan and fastest clipper ship.  Ever.  

But you know, this ain’t about boats.  So dedicated…

 

Flying cloud

 

 

Yes. You. Like
a clipper in the mists
her masts raked
ready for the gale.

 

They wonder why
I love the sea.

 

One glance as mine,
they’d understand.

 

Just as I follow
fallow wind.

 

Neil Reid © October 2009

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Sea-salt sand

Sea-salt sand

 

What dreams does star-dust dream?

 

Eucalyptus wind stirred by monarch wings.

The scent of sea-salt sand between your toes.

The spectacle of your silent fire-blue eyes.

The color of warm rain in your smile,

   seasons ripened within blue waves.

 

Montaña de Oro, a harvest in starbright paint.

The taste of you near, within arms reach.

Water like skin cascades over parted lips.

Foot strides splayed into wet sand,

   clothes falling back to the sea.

 

Random dreams reside in places

like these.  Then again, fondly, you.

 

 

Neil Reid © 1997

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Postcards home from sky and sea

With thanks to my friend Sean for providing the visual cues that roamed the beach and wound up writing these postcards here. Look see Sean’s SKY ARCADE gallery. Beautiful.  Imagine these perhaps, arriving in your mailbox.
 

sky above the bay, Sean Fraser

 

Postcards home from sky and sea

 

A finger of dry stone, where sea resides.

Piled high in summit, white mountain sky.

 

A shadow shore, brilliant, above the clouds.

No more clear the thought, waves like toes.

 

White falls in columns, splashing down.

Rolls like cotton awaiting a harvest hand.

 

No place, no way, a cloud won’t go.

Some clouds sail against the wind.

 

Clouds reflect any dream they can catch.

A beach abridged by absent waves.  Footprints following.

 

What light you cast into clouds will return.

Someone’s postcard home.  You were there.

 

Clouds have wings.  How else do they fly?

A crayon curve lost into clouded sky.

 

Far faint whispers allow ripples to dance over sand.

Some shout while cousins keep silence intact.

 

Sky roses scattered about.  The gardener’s stepped away.

Sand ripples like water, where my toes want to root.

 

Rose lips, a bridge into evening sea.  White over white,

layer sky, an extra blanket for the night ahead.

 

White streak, an opening in dark blanket sky.

Distant procession walks where horizon goes.

 

Tracks in sand, searching rain, then turned.

There’s a shadow where rainbows fall.

 

Wishing you were here!

 

 

Neil Reid © September 2009

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