this day is awesome
clear sunshine and air to breathe
let’s live it fully
Author Archives: Latterday Psalmist
scarecrow speaks of poetry
much easier scaring crows across a field
than marching twelve-point roman soldiers off
the page with no brain to strategize verse
into these pretty little boxes called
sonnets. rhyme comes accidental often
but seldom when one wants to, especially
when one hasn’t a brain . . . perhaps we could
ask lion or the tinman — dorothy
surely knows a lyric from childhood. my
instincts speak of nothing but crows, dark omen
for one who wishes to pen poetry.
but then again, perhaps heart is apter
to spout iambs than is brain, sentiment
being there unhindered by good judgment.
David M Pitchford
22 May 2012
a place for misfits and river rats
you live in a nowhere burg on a river,
chances are you go one of three ways once
they hand you that diploma and your folks
hand you their you’re-eighteen-now eviction
gift posing as a graduation present:
you join the armed forces to get out and
see the world, likely never to move back;
or, if you’re lucky or diligent, you
get yourself a scholarship and go off
to the big town to educate and make
a life for yourself elsewhere; or you stay
and commute an hour or two to one of five
big towns where the jobs come and go, and you
find yourself a place like our yella dove tavern.
david m pitchford
19 May 2012
Back in the Day
abelard bassett built a public house
just after the civil war and called it
yella dog pub. the drunk sign painter he
paid drinks to build him a sign came back with
a shingle that read: yella dove public . . .
bassett sent him back to repaint the sign,
which came back the second time reading
yella dove public tavern . . . abelard
was down kentucky way on a whiskey
run, and so the shingle went up and his
simpleton son quincy-grant let it hang —
mesmerized by its design and color.
we learned this from a librarian once
came in to research our local history.
David M Pitchford
18 May 2012
quatorzain 588
again the rains, again the shoot of grass
growing beyond the landlord’s taste for good
scaping, so he’s strafing us once again
on his nine-billion decibel tractor
of yard manicuring. its growl menaces
through the open windows from this to that
end of the house as he makes his rounds. we
try to discuss fine points of poetry,
and you ask a synonym for resplendent,
but the horrid noise of our besiegement
that dragon of grassy decimation
assaults our senses with the smell of grass
and internal combustion, the bass growl
of twenty-four horses and the itch to move.
david m pitchford
21 May 2012
