Abating

Madness Abating

These past few hours, peaceful
how long since I’ve been at peace
tumults of my own making
plagued me more days than I recall

Now, I’m learning again
to believe in miracles
watching one hour at a time
sober and accepting

as life unfolds with new meaning
and though old ghosts may haunt
I walk paths of serenity
heart open to the wide world
mind open to solutions
spirit open to hope and miracle.

28 October 2009
David M Pitchford

Swimming through Stone

Swimming Through Stone

“The drowned cannot swim” and yet drowning comes

harder than once thought. That whiskey river

flowed deep and fast—twenty years swimming drunk

through three marriages and more affairs than

any man should curse himself with, and you

were my rock, my respite buoy and lifeline—

I tried to drown to protect you from me,

but courage failed. Living that way—dead end—

thinking you’re drowned only to find yourself

swimming through stone, heart and mind in the grave

while your stubborn soul clings to earthly life . . .

longing for death, sinking in denial

and swimming against granite grain, we strain

toward life, striving to sober up and live. 

19 October 2009
David M Pitchford

Grounding

Grounded

I still feel your gravity
          and I want to be
                    grounded to the world that is YOU

David M Pitchford
12 October 2009

Runs-with-Sticks (for Sevannah)

Runs-with-sticks and the Broken Man

Sunlight glints off burnished copper curls
she runs with sticks
Mother laughing, secure in her safety
Grandma scolds, “you could put an eye out!”
And I, a broken man
watch in silent delight laden
with a thousand speculations:
how can a broken man
be trusted to love your mother?
 
All summer I’ve watched, adoring
though too tightly wound within myself
—within my own head—
to do much but watch
and flinch when your voice
pierces my ears with pain
while my heart leaps with joy
seeing you joyful
running with sticks
jumping barefoot onto rocks
scraping a knee and leaping back up
to run over rocks again
finding new and bigger sticks
collecting the smooth stones
and cicada shells, though they
bring shivers to your beautiful mother
 
But now summer is gone
and too late, your mother having moved on
to be with another,
I realize that a broken man’s love
is no less safe than running with sticks
the greater danger is falling—
now, fallen and broken more,
I know that the loving was
inevitable; the falling was not,
but born of fear and tripping
on tethers from the past
terrors of future failure imagined
now become self-fulfilled prophecy.
 
Like you, runs-with-sticks,
I’m jumping up, brushing off the dust
and running into the sun.

David M Pitchford
28 September 2009

Love Song for Aimee

Love Song For Aimee

I wanted to write you a love song
pitched to your sweet voice, perfectly
sitting out on the stoop, reading poetry
practicing lyrics while you fell
further out of love waiting
for me to find my voice
for me to interview my heart
and learn the truth, what was there . . .
 
But the rhymes came out imperfect
voice caught in my throat
constricted by fear and the flotsam
of old loves, of broken dreams,
of betrayals and desertions
 
I wanted to write you a love song
pitched the precise blue of your eyes
—why haven’t I told you the beauty I see there?
Now I sit on this black metal love seat
glider too rusted through to seat two
the lyrics come too late for love
new abandonment & new love lost
constrict my throat further
and I can’t sing you a love song
over the wooing words of your new joy
and the cries of my heart over new loss.

One not given to clinging to bitterness,
I find in the flotsam these true words:
I love you
I wish you well.

David M Pitchford
26 September 2009

After Anne Sexton

The Dead Know (After Anne Sexton)

We live merely by grace of pulse, soft throb
of heart pumping, squeaking gallows of our lungs
sucking one breath after another, rungs
of some prophet’s ladder—angel tries to rob
our feet of purchase each step—for all we sob
and gasp and cry and cheer, our songs are sung
for the living (even the dirge is sung
to comfort these). Yet living hearts will throb
 
and strive and lust for life until the grave
reaches from beneath the Earth to capture
its bounty back and pull all down, swallow
life in Death’s inimical gravity . . .
What do the Dead know of life’s sweet rapture
but memoried rot in which they wallow?

David M Pitchford
18 September 2009

Love Song: Oh Southern Queen

Love Song: Oh Southern Queen

Let us go now, you and Ideal in
eerie feathers clad and mourning knights
torn asunder in contests, to delights
under meteor skies. Maiden within
seems less tender than Truth. Lies more akin
gone from godly tongues . . . What ungodly frights
over dreamscapes, demon chased, and unites
faith through Pinnacle eyes? What tales we spin
 
here under Cancer moon and sisters dark
Eternity is God’s breath breathing Him,
never to exhale! We the lesser sing
unerring hymns, sun-bright and shadow-stark
‘neath foreign moon, meteoric—no slim
Ideal, she is dark of silver ring! 

David M Pitchford
11 September 2009

This is a revisited version of a sonnet written in a book (Epic Fantasy) titled Oh Southern Queen, which was dedicated to my wife at the time, Siobhan. It’s a bit abstract, but I’m still very drawn to the poem.

From Kat’s Challenge

Short Sad Story of a Life 

It was the yellow banner caught him up,
reflected in her sun-lightened hair. First
coffee. That led to lunch. Lunch lingered through
afternoon. No surprise to awake in
her arms. His friends became her friends; later
blending families their next logical
step in a unified life. Sharing life’s
experiences kept them together.

Circumstances arose. Taxes and debts,
kids going off to college, and one day
he awoke to find himself sorry to
have missed some nameless thing, some destiny
never promised—Feeding seeds of his madness
whiskey, he fled to hermit retirement.

31 August 2009
David M Pitchford

This poem was written as an exercise based on a ten-word challenge made by KAT Corrigan in FaceBook. She listed:
1. Taxes
2. Lunch
3. Coffee
4. Banner
5, friends
6. Feeding
7. Retirement
8. Sorry
9. Awake
10. Sun

generally, the idea is to use all ten words in a poem — style or form are not mandated, I’m simply rather fond of the stump sonnet