28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Turkey
Tags
Archaeology, Burial, Cayonu Tepesi, Ergani, Poetry, Silence, Site, Travel, Turkey
To describe the natally-flexed remains
of someone struck dumb ten millennia ago
as “Burial AD 6-08”
is to assume that echoes are silenced
with discovery.
Or is there a commonality of human-ness
that crosses the dreadful gap
and threads the journey
of terrible silence
with tentative murmurs
that somehow commingle
our mutual pasts.
ARW
1985
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Turkey
I cannot say
Just what it is that starts the journey back
To those Anatolian nights on the ratchety and ancient train
Dreams not summoned but filled with sounds and scents
Even the night light is different
The moon larger
the shadows of hills more defined
Voices from the darkness of the compartment
Comrades from the years of uncovering the past
Scattered, gone on to other places
Other worlds.
ARW
1998
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Our neatly scheduled lives that
correspond to seasons
Arrivals and departures to warm sun,
pine cooled nights
And holidays back home
Sometimes interrupted
For whatever reason – sometimes
urgent
Other times less so
But breaks in time-crashing routine
Somehow reset the clock of dwindling days
And make the measured hours seem longer.
ARW
2001
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
Tags
Abandonment, Houses, Plank, Poetry, Souls, St. Lawrence River, Weeds, Wooden
Finally
In early Fall we returned to the river
The cottage shuttered and locked
since last August
Seemed, in the grey and windy afternoon
Shrunken into itself
As though it was aware of the Spring and Summer
spent alone.
Intrusively, tall weeds thrust themselves
through wooden plank steps
While inside the drawn green shades kept
minuscule light at bay
Just a brief visit of reassurance –
Certain houses have souls of a sort
They miss the humans who stay away too long.
ARW
1999
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
As if to atone for the last season’s river level
When docks, made to float, were sunken in silt
And cottages were closed in midsummer
Or left unopened
Lonely in the silence
This year the St. Lawrence flooded our small bridge in June
Making a miniature rapids for little ones to float twig boats
Now it is August and there are few signs of a diminished level
Rocky shoals still lurk just below the surface
Tricking the inexperienced boaters
Much like life
With wisdom grained and then forgotten.
ARW
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Glimpses
Tags
Long after the dimming of time
Memory’s glances make explanations possible
And pull aside briefly the curtains of forgetfulness
Little vignettes of the past speed by with cries of
remember this, remember this…
Never mind that scenes resurrected from
a different reality
What we glimpse is the synthesis
of what the heart considers memorable
ARW
28 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Thousand Islands
A dark place
With windows boarded against the light
We thought it our personal playground
The bolted doors to keep out the others
The faceless intruders
Who scrawled names and dates on unfinished plaster walls
Rooms without number
Decaying ceilings, stairs without planks
five levels of adventure and exploration
The turreted roof made six
But then there was the basement
That fearful place
Black as pitch with rooms filled with crates
cimmerian cases of sculptures, tapestries
Ornaments to fill this monument of love
To a woman who died too soon.
ARW
