New poems by Frank C. Praeger

 

An Aside to Urban Development

 

Beside the Schuylkill's muddiness,

blue-ribboned commendation, cost-containing surfeit of illusion;

 

left out, forsythia, wild roses,

oh, that unconscionable berry-thick mulberry tree,

a field of yellow sweet clover,

of mullein, tasseled grass, of yarrow -

 

also,

what would have been, branch tracings on the snow -

bulldozed,

                                 turned over,

                                                                            destroyed.

 

 

 

Ergo

 

Lanced,

no hostiles nor captured.

Can't you hear them,

that herky-jerky wheezing -

but for the cattails wavering

who knows what could have happened?

How distant can you be

still hoping to be accepted?

Now, nostalgia. For what?

Bloodied serrated edges,

gallantry remitted,

what I have never been held to?

Whose doorway was it? Those spots that waxed and waned.

A merry-go-round of cousins.

 

Ergo,

intrepid cataloguing brings out unacknowledged gratuities,

still, I can not master the path home.

A cautionary note conveyed,

eyes winking every which way.

 

 

 

A Catalogue of Sorts

 

Whispers and a continent in-between.

Lips that I, too, had touched.

Someone's arms, someone else's.

Faces, some haunting, some crowding.

 

Water,

                   in a stillness,

                                             pauses.

 

 

 

 

Unsupportable

 

Now, or was it then,

but was it?

Long, salaciously long

unceasing craving

for any notional thing

and not escape even upon sleeping,

even a nightmarish fumbling,

only to reconnoiter where it might have been.

Encountered? Adlibbed, estranged.

 

Granted no easement

pretending,

longing seems to have no feel for anything.

Forceful, sheer,

what followed cracked;

unsupportable then,

noteworthy, not one guarantee,

rummaging

throughout the total happenstance of,

unnerving,

                                      inexhaustible fact.

 

 

 

Anything You Can Think Of

 

Trellises and shade,

squirrels and rocks,

rain, dry rot -

explain

or pass untouched.

And more than hesitant

the least botched.

Again,

nuts and pits,

powder and a woman's face,

cries, a baby's crotch.

Connect:

lesions, blood,

pity, blind,

some, none.

 

Someone said,

'Any cup will do.'

Connected, too.

Laundry being folded

as well, well, as anything,

anything,

you can think of.

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