08-19-2012, 12:25 AM
This is part of a thread I kept and just want to share it it was done with me and two poets bouncing off each other’s work, It was one of the best times I had online, frank died not long after, and I still miss him. he was a very kind man who knew he was at the end of life. I had sensed it in him and being total selfish for his company tried to keep him buoyant and safe in the vindictiveness of online poetry forums. I so miss his work . I cut out most of the chatty posts
franks words; (we spoke in poems to each other) brad and I had been writing letter poems up to this point and his poem suited the mood
hope I am not intruding.
look Back Time --- by frank miller
I think of things I never saw:
sun set behind the mountains of the moon,
a green flash in an island's seascaped sky,
the blue white curve of earth,
the layered ice and furling arc of northern lights.
I think of what I saw but did not see;
a bright thread on the fringes of my day,
a face embroidered on a crowd,
you, who i saw and left behind,
changeless where I left you
until I see you now, as I should have then,
with Eden's eye at the fresh of day
but far as the mountains of the moon
My love letter to the past. Astronomers do not talk of distance - they talk of look back time
that star is a million light years away- a million years for the light to reach our eye It may be gone. Sometimes my past seems just like that. I think these letters are great Bronte I should not have posted but I thought you might not mind. You need to read some Hopkins or Donne and write a love letter to God. You could make abook , a chain letter to the world-- Emily - this is my letter to the world/ who did not write to me. Again sorry if I intruded
MINE in reply
Wide Open
Sometimes my past seems just like that
when gods in all their guises spoke
and I, my farthings worth I saw
Just as the light was growing dim.
I saw, I understood, then quailed
and tried, too often knew the ways
and whys, indeed I often failed
But always knew you, moon, you sun
I knew the linen of your face
and err you went, then so went I
with reverence to eternal light.
30/12/2010
(frank) Thank you the piece you left is lovely. Here is another
Letter for Amy and Tanka in the Court of Death
I came in winter
the grass was covered with frost
and ice in the trees made them seem cased in glass.
You left in spring;
the blossoms were white and thick.
The trees seemed covered by a snow.
I went to take a branch.
A thorn on the briar cut me,
deeply.
I am here with you,
your hand in my strangers care.
I am not your blood.
We talk of family matters
I do not know but I share.
No brocade, no silk
but cotton, stiff, starched and cold.
Lie now white on white
waiting for the groom to bring
endless love in endless night.
--In some eastern countries white is for mourning.
a farthings worth I saw is delicious and linen of your face. When did you write this . If you wrote it now I quit.
___
Linen of your face is a wonderful line
Here is another letter this one to the past.
( I just love this next poem by him poem)
LETTER TO THE BOY ON THE BEACH
This beach, this today, so many years away
from where I lived inside the boy I was,
is still, filled with messages I cannot read,
the trident markings of the gulls,
the enigmatic markings on the cracked crab shells,
the thin white waver of salt lines
scripting dark sand.
A continent ago I see the you that I was then,
belly flopped beside a tidal pool
where the red anemone waves its flowered sting
as we watch the hermit crabs trying on new suits
for size.
I should write you Tell you-
Tell you what? I barely know
the how of who I am, the miles
from then to now, that shore to this.
No. Write me, tell me how the rock feels
beneath our knee: the half-eaten sandy sandwich.
Tell me of the salt drying into itch on skinny legs.
of silver fish so close to the red flowered danger.
Tell me how it was to live waist high
to the loving world.
Send me word;
bottle some wonder; drift it across our common sea
that you and I will live as one.
----------
MINE to Brad
Oh! you walk my dear,
yet deep in sleep you feel the pull
of wakefulness, life’s other dress
that we slip on, to sort out things
at odds of going awfully wrong.
We sleep to wish up tender dreams.
and sort meddlesome inner schemes
that often makes us go astray
while in that maelstrom espy flashes
of handsome men and coltish lasses--
Back to how we thought we’d be,
long before we heedful three
Bad Ass Brad meets Scottish Frank
and me
Brads poem
My Dear, My Dear,
My brazen girl, my battered beauty,
how did you learn to love soft words,
and suss out those like me who love your gifts?
This world's too small for world wanderers,
and treasure diggers, and castle builders,
such as you. You know something I know too:
this world holds true old souls: battered veterans
of some hundred lives, who hear creation's great
rhythms surge against forever's shores, shores...
You suck and pummel me like a sea maw
that throws up treasure and scatters sailors.
She pilots me into a sure harbor,
inspects my braces, sends me back out sound.
You take me back when I have strayed and faulted,
you bring me home with stories of your straying.
She sends me out when I get slack and safe,
she makes me gird my loins and brave strange woods.
Let the way I love wide show I love deep:
strong rivers bend sharply and gnaw deeply.
Yours,
Bradley _________
I am delighted to add at this point he went out and found a new love.. for real.. I miss both of them ..
franks words; (we spoke in poems to each other) brad and I had been writing letter poems up to this point and his poem suited the mood
hope I am not intruding.
look Back Time --- by frank miller
I think of things I never saw:
sun set behind the mountains of the moon,
a green flash in an island's seascaped sky,
the blue white curve of earth,
the layered ice and furling arc of northern lights.
I think of what I saw but did not see;
a bright thread on the fringes of my day,
a face embroidered on a crowd,
you, who i saw and left behind,
changeless where I left you
until I see you now, as I should have then,
with Eden's eye at the fresh of day
but far as the mountains of the moon
My love letter to the past. Astronomers do not talk of distance - they talk of look back time
that star is a million light years away- a million years for the light to reach our eye It may be gone. Sometimes my past seems just like that. I think these letters are great Bronte I should not have posted but I thought you might not mind. You need to read some Hopkins or Donne and write a love letter to God. You could make abook , a chain letter to the world-- Emily - this is my letter to the world/ who did not write to me. Again sorry if I intruded
MINE in reply
Wide Open
Sometimes my past seems just like that
when gods in all their guises spoke
and I, my farthings worth I saw
Just as the light was growing dim.
I saw, I understood, then quailed
and tried, too often knew the ways
and whys, indeed I often failed
But always knew you, moon, you sun
I knew the linen of your face
and err you went, then so went I
with reverence to eternal light.
30/12/2010
(frank) Thank you the piece you left is lovely. Here is another
Letter for Amy and Tanka in the Court of Death
I came in winter
the grass was covered with frost
and ice in the trees made them seem cased in glass.
You left in spring;
the blossoms were white and thick.
The trees seemed covered by a snow.
I went to take a branch.
A thorn on the briar cut me,
deeply.
I am here with you,
your hand in my strangers care.
I am not your blood.
We talk of family matters
I do not know but I share.
No brocade, no silk
but cotton, stiff, starched and cold.
Lie now white on white
waiting for the groom to bring
endless love in endless night.
--In some eastern countries white is for mourning.
a farthings worth I saw is delicious and linen of your face. When did you write this . If you wrote it now I quit.
___
Linen of your face is a wonderful line
Here is another letter this one to the past.
( I just love this next poem by him poem)
LETTER TO THE BOY ON THE BEACH
This beach, this today, so many years away
from where I lived inside the boy I was,
is still, filled with messages I cannot read,
the trident markings of the gulls,
the enigmatic markings on the cracked crab shells,
the thin white waver of salt lines
scripting dark sand.
A continent ago I see the you that I was then,
belly flopped beside a tidal pool
where the red anemone waves its flowered sting
as we watch the hermit crabs trying on new suits
for size.
I should write you Tell you-
Tell you what? I barely know
the how of who I am, the miles
from then to now, that shore to this.
No. Write me, tell me how the rock feels
beneath our knee: the half-eaten sandy sandwich.
Tell me of the salt drying into itch on skinny legs.
of silver fish so close to the red flowered danger.
Tell me how it was to live waist high
to the loving world.
Send me word;
bottle some wonder; drift it across our common sea
that you and I will live as one.
----------
MINE to Brad
Oh! you walk my dear,
yet deep in sleep you feel the pull
of wakefulness, life’s other dress
that we slip on, to sort out things
at odds of going awfully wrong.
We sleep to wish up tender dreams.
and sort meddlesome inner schemes
that often makes us go astray
while in that maelstrom espy flashes
of handsome men and coltish lasses--
Back to how we thought we’d be,
long before we heedful three
Bad Ass Brad meets Scottish Frank
and me
Brads poem
My Dear, My Dear,
My brazen girl, my battered beauty,
how did you learn to love soft words,
and suss out those like me who love your gifts?
This world's too small for world wanderers,
and treasure diggers, and castle builders,
such as you. You know something I know too:
this world holds true old souls: battered veterans
of some hundred lives, who hear creation's great
rhythms surge against forever's shores, shores...
You suck and pummel me like a sea maw
that throws up treasure and scatters sailors.
She pilots me into a sure harbor,
inspects my braces, sends me back out sound.
You take me back when I have strayed and faulted,
you bring me home with stories of your straying.
She sends me out when I get slack and safe,
she makes me gird my loins and brave strange woods.
Let the way I love wide show I love deep:
strong rivers bend sharply and gnaw deeply.
Yours,
Bradley _________
I am delighted to add at this point he went out and found a new love.. for real.. I miss both of them ..
Perfection changes with the light and light goes on for infinity ~~~Bronte