First, a few of my favorite poems by others:
Below are some of my published poems. Click on any poem title to reveal the poem text, along with some Notes about the poem. The poems are listed in order of increasing length, measured as word count. My favorite, for now, is “Honor Among Sleeves.”
Why quatrains in a statistics textbook? It’s explained, tongue in
cheek, on p. 2: the chapters commence with a stanza of elegant and insightful verse
composed by a famous poet. The quatrains1 are formed of
dactylic2 tetrameter3, or, colloquially speaking,
“country waltz” meter. The poems regard conceptual themes of the chapter
via allusion from immortal human motifs in waltz timing. 1 quatrain [noun]: Four lines of verse. Unless it’s
written “qua train,” in which case it’s a philosopher comparing
something to a locomotive. 2 dactylic [adjective]: A metrical foot in poetry
comprising one stressed and two unstressed syllables. Not to be confused
with a pterodactyl, which was a flying dinosaur, and which probably
sounded nothing like a dactyl unless it fell from the sky and bounced
twice: THUMP-bump-bump. Ch 1. What’s in this book (read this first!) Oh honey I’m searching for love that is true, Ch 2. Introduction: Credibility, Models, and
Parameters I just want someone who I can believe in, Ch. 3. The R Programming Language You said, dear Descartes, that “je pense, donc je suis,” Ch. 4. What Is This Stuff Called Probability? Oh darlin’ you change from one day to the next, Ch. 5. Bayes’ Rule I’ll love you forever in every respect Ch. 6. Estimating a Binomial Probability I built up my courage to ask her to dance Ch. 7. Markov Chain Monte Carlo You furtive posterior: coy distribution. Ch. 8. JAGS I’m hurtin’ from all these rejected proposals; Ch. 15: The Generalized Linear Model Straight and proportionate, deep in your core Ch. 19: Metric Predicted Variable with One Nominal
Predictor Put umpteen people in two groups at random. Ch. 21: Dichotomous Predicted Variable Fortune and Favor make fickle decrees, it’s Ch. 23: Ordinal Predicted Variable The winner is first, and that’s all that he knows, whether Ch. 25: Tools in the Trunk She changes her hair, and he changes his style,
Selected Quatrains from Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, 2nd
Ed.
But driving through fog is so dang hard to do.
Please paint me a line on the road to your heart,
I’ll rev up my pick up and get a clean start.
Notes
This chapter provides a road map to the book, which hopes to have you
fall in love with Bayesian analysis even if you previously had unhappy
relationships with statistics. The poem plays with those ideas.
Someone at home who will not leave me grievin’.
Show me a sign that you’ll always be true,
and I’ll be your model of faith and virtue.
Notes
This chapter introduces ideas of mathematical models, credibility of
parameter values, and the semantics of models. The poem plays with the
words, “model,” “believe,” and “true,” in an everyday context, and hints
that Bayesian methods (personified) may be someone to believe in. (And
yes, grammatically, the first line should be “in whom I can believe,”
but the poem is supposed to be colloquial speech. Besides, the
grammatically correct version is iambic not dactylic!)
Deriving existence from uncertainty.
Now, you are gone, and we say, “au revoir,”
Doubtless we think, René, therefore we R.
Notes
This chapter introduces the programming language R. The poem provides
motivation for using R, primarily in the form of an extended setup for
the final pun on the word “are.” Further background: The French
philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes (1596-1650), wondered how
he could be certain of anything. The only thing he could be certain of
was his own thoughts of uncertainty, and therefore he, as thinker, must
exist. In English, the idea is captured by the phrase, “I think
therefore I am.” Changed to plural, the phrase becomes “we think
therefore we are.”
I’m feelin’ deranged and just plain ol’ perplexed.
I’ve learned to put up with your raves and your rants:
The mean I can handle but not variance.
Notes
This chapter discusses ideas of probability distributions. Among those
ideas are the technical definitions of the mean and variance of a
distribution. The poem plays with colloquial meanings of those words.
(I’ll marginalize all your glaring defects)
But if you could change some to be more like me
I’d love you today unconditionally.
Notes
This chapter is about Bayes’ rule, which shows how marginal
probabilities relate to conditional probabilities when taking data into
account. The terms “marginal” and (un-)“conditional” are used in the
poem with their colloquial meanings. The poem also plays with the
reversal of meaning between conditional and unconditional: The poem says
that the conditional love, p(love|change), is greater than the marginal
love, p(love), but ironically says that satisfying the condition would
bring unconditional love
By drinking too much before taking the chance.
I fell on my butt when she said see ya later;
Less priors might make my posterior beta.
Notes
This chapter is about using the beta distribution as a prior
distribution for the Bernoulli likelihood function, in which case the
posterior distribution is also a beta distribution. The poem explains
another way to make a posterior beta.
Alluring, curvaceous, evading solution.
Although I can see what you hint at is ample,
I’ll settle for one representative sample.
Notes
This chapter is about methods for approximating a posterior distribution
by collecting from it a large representative sample. These methods are
important because complex posterior distributions are otherwise very
challenging to get a handle on. The poem says merely that complexly
shaped posterior distributions are evasive, but instead of demanding a
precise solution, we will do practical analysis with a representative
sample. Some people have suggested that the poem seems to allude to
something else, but I don’t know what they could mean.
My feelings, like peelings, down garbage disposals.
S’pose you should go your way and I should go mine,
We’ll both be accepted somewhere down the line.
Notes
This chapter is about the software package “JAGS,” which stands for Just
Another Gibbs Sampler. In Gibbs sampling, unlike Metropolis sampling,
all proposed jumps are accepted, but all jumps are along a line parallel
to a parameter axis. The quatrain personifies two different parameters
in Gibbs sampling: they go orthogonal directions but both are accepted
somewhere down the line.
All is orthogonal, ceiling to floor.
But on the outside the vines creep and twist
’round all the parapets shrouded in mist.
Notes
The poem is a metaphorical description of the generalized linear model
(GLM). The core of the GLM is a linear combination of predictors; the
resulting value is proportional to the magnitudes of the predictors, as
described in the poem. The GLM can have a nonlinear inverse link
function; this is the twisting vine in the poem. The GLM has a random
noise distribution that obscures the underlying trend; this is the
shrouding mist of the poem.
Social dynamics make changes in tandem:
Members within groups will quickly conform;
Difference between groups will soon be the norm.
Notes
The models in this chapter are analogous to traditional analysis of
variance (ANOVA), which partitions variance into within-group variance
and between-group variance. The poem suggests that for groups of people,
within-group variance tends to decrease while between-group variance
tends to increase.
Heads or it’s tails with no middle degrees.
Flippant commandments decreed by law gods, have
Reasons so rare they have minus log odds.
Notes
This chapter is about logistic regression, and one of the concepts is
called “log odds,” explained in Section 21.2.1. I was fortunate to rhyme
“log odds” with “law gods” and then work backwards to their names,
Fortune and Favor.
Won by a mile or won by a nose. But
Second recalls every inch of that distance, in
Vivid detail and with haunting persistence.
Notes
This chapter is about modeling ordinal data. The poem emphasizes the
emotional difference between ordinal and metric measurement.
She paints on her face, and he wears a fake smile,
She shrink wraps her head, and he stretches the truth,
But they’ll always be stuck with their done wasted youth.
Notes
One of the topics in this chapter is reparameterization, in which
parameters of a model are transformed into new parameters. For example,
a rectangle can be described in terms of its length and width, or in
terms of its area and aspect ratio, where area = length x width and
aspect ratio = length/width. Either way, it’s the same rectangle. The
poem personifies reparameterization.
Doing
Bayesian Data Analysis, 2nd Edition , Academic Press, 2015.
Looking east before sunrise I like to
Looking East
see the slender crescent moon (sky haiku
so abbreviated it is only
an opening parenthesis, holy
punctuation setting aside last night’s
constellations, planets, and satellites
as mere afterthoughts like the Milky Way,
which justify staying living for today).
The Orchards
Poetry Journal , Winter 2024 (7 December 2024), p. 115.
Download
PDF file.
Notes
This poem tries to embody the scene it describes. The words “cresent
moon” are immediately illustrated by an opening parenthesis, “(”, and
all the elements of the night sky are contained by the parenthetical
remark. Notice the lines are decasyllabic (10 syllables).
Notice also the triple rhyme of “I like to” with “sky haiku”.
Stratigraphy
gods
the
of
valley
monumental
a
sustaining
I.V.
an
from
drips
like
justified
center
solo
stacked
words in
solace seeks one
loss relentless
and age with then
scree scree scree scree scree scree
scree pools abundant floods deluge a scree
scree scree gush and rain words youth in scree scree
SAGE
Magazine , 17 February 2025
Notes
The poem is intended to be read first as in standard English, left to
right, top to bottom, then to be read again as a geologist would read
strata, from bottom to top, and right to left. Feel your eyes
as you read upward. The poem is formatted to resemble a rock formation
in Monument
Valley and The Valley of
the Gods.
When you consider manufacturing text for hours, flushing then you realize because the depth of its impact
The Power of Poetry for Climate Change
the carbon footprint
of butt sitting,
wasted words up the delete-key smokestack
while the glaciers and ice caps melt,
this poem has
enormous power for change
is how much
it made the oceans rise.
The
Lake , 01 March 2025.
Notes
This poem was provoked, in part, by reading this article: “The carbon
emissions of writing and illustrating are lower for AI than for humans.”
Tomlinson B, Black RW, Patterson DJ, and Torrance AW. Scientific
Reports, 2024, 14(1):3732. DOI:
10.1038/s41598-024-54271-x
Of course, the carbon emissions of (humans) writing quick doggerel are
less than the carbon emissions of (humans) writing carefully crafted and
moving poetry. Is it worth the cost?
Any time spent Any time spent Any time spent Any time spent Any time spent Any time spent Any time spent
Any Time Spent
Not making babies.
Or not making money.
Not tilling the soil.
Or not dancing the floor.
Not watching the sunset.
Or watching the sunset.
Not being outraged.
Or being outraged.
Being forced to choose.
Or regretting your choice.
Having no choice.
Or lamenting your fate.
Going on living.
Or giving up.
SAGE
Magazine , 17 February 2025
Notes
What is wasted time? It’s any time spent doing fruitless or worthless
things, or not doing fruitful and worthy things. But what are those?
Each tercet contemplates a different angle on what’s worth doing or
contemplating. The first suggests what matters is production: babies and
money. The second suggests (Protestant) ethics: working hard and dancing
(in my mind, but not explicit in the poem, according to the traditional
song
Simple
Gifts: “by turning, turning we come down right”). The third
suggests gratitude and appreciation of beauty; but then backtracks,
wondering if that’s a waste because it violates the first and second.
The fourth suggests moral engagement and outrage is important, but then
suggests mere outrage is unproductive. The fifth and sixth go together,
pondering categories of choice, because the whole issue of How To Spend
One’s Time presumes one has some degree of choice. The last tercet
abstracts to the highest level. It was provoked by reading
an
article in the NYT about a climate activist who committed suicide
but his loved ones and colleagues did not give up.
The poet steps up to the mic, I can almost hear the ocean. People lean forward and now I hear the ocean.
Open Mic Night
looks at us in the audience,
then reaches deep inside
and pulls out
a seashell,
twisted with finger-thick whorls,
lined with life ridges
and broken heart spires.
Cradling their seashell in their upturned hand,
the poet opens their mouth and exhales:
and cock their heads,
then lift their cupped hands
behind their ears.
I examine my hands
for cuppability,
and notice my palms
with fingerprints whorled,
life-lines ridged
and heart-lines broken.
I cradle these palms behind my ears
to amplify the poet’s keening.
But gradually
I turn my clam-shell hands
to cover my ears completely:
The
Lake , 01 March 2025.
Notes
When poets read their poems aloud, especially in the context of
background noises in a crowd of people at an open-mic night, I find it
challenging to hear every word and to fully comprehend the poem. Beyond
comprehension, appreciation of a poem also depends on how it resonates
with the listener. Perhaps, sometimes, a listener likes a poem best when
it lets them hear themselves. Have you had this kind of experience
listening to poetry? Is that the ocean you hear?
My shelves lift volumes covered soft and hard, Like them my body is a flower clasped The vast hillside lawn has horizontal
Bookmarks and Headstones
a thousand books I’ve given brief regard.
Slower gazing reveals the multitude
all clasping slender markers that protrude
like flowers lazing where the reading paused
and then expired when the flow was lost.
between the fast-read chapters of my past
and all my future pages still untold.
After each day’s loud narration, my soul
retreats to some hidden library room
while body marks where story should resume.
shelves of tightly shouldered bookmarks, some tall
some short, but all denoting interrupt-
ted narratives of people who have upped
and stuck a headstone where life was leading,
and where visitors may resume reading.
Grand
Little Things , 05 February 2025.
Notes
The lines are all decasyllabic. There is intentional echoing of
sounds beyond the end rhymes; for example, “slower gazing” with “flowers
lazing” and with “flow was lost”. I had fun rhyming “interrupt-/ ted”
with “upped/ and”. The metaphors – body as bookmark and headstone as
bookmark – still affect me even after reflection, and I hope they may
work for you too.
Summer’s hot and summer’s humid: Summer’s games waste on all night, Dogs bark man at crack of dawn, August: Annexed 8 B.C., when July the Fourth: The flag’s still there! But wait… retreat.
Were It Not for the Firefly
Summer’s trifling, endless, stupid.
insects swarm under the lights,
mindless phototropic creatures,
like the people in the bleachers,
mesmerized by play-by-play,
eating dogs while they decay.
roaring mowers bite the lawn,
deaf’ning blowers blast the dust,
wound with gas exhaust disgust.
Ceasar named a month “for Me!”
because his uncle Julius
already seized July from us.
The fireworks, bursting in air,
remind us all of war’s delights:
Our children’s fate is firefights.
The firefly —
in quiet night, in starlit sky,
with summer’s Milky Way aglow —
still winks of wonders yet to know.
The
Tipton Poetry Journal , Issue #61, 01 Septempber 2024, p. 10.
Notes
Ever wonder why the months – September, October, November, and December
– are the 9th to 12th months of the year, instead of the 7th to 10th as
their names imply? Now you know: Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus.
[Withheld until publication.]
A Late Afternoon Lying on My Back
Pine Hills
Review , perhaps July 2025.
Notes
Just a love poem.
I pray to the Invisible: Please protect us But let us see the light, And give us wisdom – AND when non-believers So then, in them,
At the Window
from blizzard and hail, from blaze and swelter,
from flying insects that sting and swarm,
from pestilence and sulfurous miasma,
and from the crowded bluster and welter.
through your architectured frame,
of sun, of stars, of moon, of clouds,
of dappled leaves, of shimmering creek,
and all your gentle creatures without names.
when through your fearsome grace,
you slay a bird mid-flight
and leave an ashen smudge
suspended mid-air in its place.
doubt your clear perfection,
then at dusk reveal the veil
of dust and spots and filth
co-mingled in their own reflection,
it will grow known
that they reside within
the mercy of your windowed house
and they should not throw stones.
SAGE
Magazine , 17 February 2025
Notes
Windows are miraculous. They are nearly invisible. We rely on them. Yet
they depend on our treating them reverently. Do you believe in windows,
even when you cannot see them? Perhaps other things too? Form: In every
stanza of five lines, the second and fifth lines rhyme, with double
rhymes (e.g., “architectured frame” with “creatures
without names”, and “fearsome grace” with
“air in its place”). Content: In the third stanza, the
image of the bird slain by crashing into a window uses the words “ashen
smudge”, which are an allusion to Vladimir Nabokov’s poem, Pale
Fire, which begins: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / by the
false azure in the windowpane; / I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I
/ lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.”
The sun shines fluidly on every house,
The Sun Shines Fluidly on Every House
spilling over the sheep and cattle
in view of the cowboy brothers (twins
– by different fathers – it’s a long story),
while at the water’s edge a crab
scuttles unnoticed by a cat
dozing beside an adolescent girl
weighing her options, curious
of the scorpion poised
at the hooves of a centaur (yes,
a half-horse man roams this landscape)
with bow and arrow slung open-carry,
galloping to meet his chimeric brethren
the sea-goat at the seaside where
a gorgeous boy pours them wine
and two fish swim together
connected by a luminous thread,
which, star by star, connects to every
creature in this scene because
the sun shone fluidly in every house
the day each one was born,
and would keep shining even if
the cat appraised its options,
and the scorpion claimed to be crab
and the bull converted to ram
and the brothers came out as fishes
and the centaur dressed as a sea-goat
and the boy became a girl.
Flying
Island Journal , 29 November 2024.
Notes
This poem suggests that a person’s sun sign at birth should not define
their identity. The poem goes through all twelve signs of the zodiac,
also called houses, in order: sheep = aries; cattle = taurus; brothers =
gemini; crab = cancer; cat = leo; girl = virgo; weighing options =
libra; scorpion = scorpio; centaur = sagittarius; sea-goat = capricorn;
boy = aquarius; fish = pisces.
In response to a poem by X. J.
Kennedy Pushed from your mother’s womb plop into your
The Purpose of Time
nursing home, or having sex while the re-
sulting teenager leaves home forever,
your skin youth smooth .blink. old-age leathery;
if all life’s moments collapsed impromptu,
the sensory flash would be too intense.
So, they quip, “the purpose of time is to
keep everything from happening at once,”
even though, in retrospect, all of life
implodes into a box we call the past.
Ironic, sure. But off. Time is a knife
that stabs into the dark of our half-assed
moral self, cleaving act from consequence,
daring us to buy now and pay later,
premeditate vengeance after grievance,
ignore the crap we flush downstream. Water
under the bridge – is always stepped in twice,
once by us and again by our descend-
ents. Time the tempter, a con-man’s device
that lures us to ignore and to pretend,
so we desire more and more of now
before the wheel of karma spins around
and slaps the future’s hand-palm on our brow
and time’s true purpose suddenly is found.
Smoky
Blue Literary and Arts Magazine , Issue #22 Spring/Summer 2025,
p. 29; 20 February 2025.
Notes
Notice the lines are decasyllabic, and every four lines follow
an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first ten lines of this poem paraphrase the
1997 poem by X. J. Kennedy, “The
Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything From Happening at Once”.
This poem, by contrast, emphasizes the moral implications of time:
Separating act from consequence, delaying comeuppance.
I can’t put my finger on it, when did it When did having children become an How did folks forget that we are children of
Carbon Footprints of Unwanted Children
change? I would ride my bike miles from
home, even at night and in rain. No one
worried, I would just roam. It ended, maybe,
with a spoonful of cereal and a half gallon of
fear, the milk carton asking, feral and wild:
“Have you, have you, seen this child?”
imposition? Mine were a gift and a reason to
keep trying, a joy and a purpose to postpone
dying. When did people reach the grim
decision that making babies would only reap
regret? Maybe it happened on the internet?
Doom-scrolling starving polar bears and
forests burning down, all trampled to death
by carbon footprints of our own. Therefore,
breeding carbon copies would only be
complicit. Ergo, we will have no
grandchildren to visit.
the universe? That we’re allowed here too.
My toddler daughter knew. At twilight
beaming pure delight, using her own voice:
“Daddy, there’s a ’tar up in the ’ky!”
Maybe, I could also give my voice a try?
Look up and hear the bluebird sing his
ancient Navajo song, “Get up, my
grandchild, it is dawn!” Reminding me that
I belong.
SAGE
Magazine , 17 February 2025
Notes
This poem was provoked by thoughts of climate change. In our cultural
climate, there has been a change in attitudes about children. This poem
is about attitudes toward children (give them freedom, protect them from
every conceivable danger), attitudes about children (they are a gift,
they are an imposition), attitudes from children (joy and delight), and
attitudes of our own affected by children (let’s keep trying to make
things better).
All these sleeves are overwhelming. How can
Honor Among Sleeves
a person choose the less bad hole to dig,
the word that won’t offend if unspoken,
which nostril vents less carbon, the too big
or too small gesture of disagreement,
which eyebrow to raise, or whether to let
fall the other shoe, whether to lament
or to rejoice, to forgive or forget?
I watched an hourglass for clues of how
to discern which grain of sand best merits
a moment’s shove from above to below,
but the judgment passed without a care, its
ruling like the wind I listened to for
days, trying to infer how it decides
which way to blow, while I just pray in four
directions, hold my bated breath inside.
I have learned not to open a carton
of eggs; it is impossible to choose
which hens’ efforts should be granted pardon
while others win cracking – or did they lose?
Such presumptuous advice men dispense,
to “put my best foot forward,” as if rank-
ing toes and insteps is just common sense,
and calling one foot “worst” is merely frank.
So I’m stuck with my feet in the quicksand
of this immobilizing awareness,
this hard fact: the journey of a thousand
miles begins with a single unfairness.
And now it is unbearable to look
you in the eye, to choose which window to
surveil, and wonder whether I mistook
which camera was taking the photo,
and if I close my eyes, imagining
to kiss you in the dark, I agonize
wanting all of you at once: beginning
anywhere is such injustice, a lie.
Blue
Unicorn , Fall 2025 (posted pre-publication with permission)
Notes
Even the smallest decision is fraught with moral weight. To choose one
as better is to judge the other as worse, even if no such demerit is
intended. Meritocracy feels arbitrary and mendacious. Can a person
remain honorable even choosing which sleeve to put on first? By the way,
notice every line is decasyllabic, and every four lines follow
an ABAB rhyme scheme.
With appreciation and apologies
to Taylor Swift “No rules in breakable heaven.” Looking in your eyes, The hourglass frozen, stuck sand ice, I’ve paid the blizzard, what does the wind owe? Gravity’s lost and this space stays finite Shot by that arrow, aim high but miss low, Angels are watching and advocate shy “Fever dream high in the quiet of the night,”
Cruel Sestina
and her wonderful song, Cruel
Summer.
no fools could break even. Feeling this high
there’s no falling. I’m floating light out the window,
no angel calling and time lingering slow.
No candles, no street lamps, sighing into the night.
No handles, no guard rails, resigned to the dice.
refracting the icicles into my eyes.
Maybe some summer we can reignite
the airborne embers once bonfire high.
If you don’t see me you’ve set your eyes low,
I’m the spark floating out the window.
Skate on the surface, slip-and-slide ice,
even the glaciers can see we’re too slow,
just waiting and watching our love melt in sighs.
The heat from my mind in this fever-dream high
during the chill of this dark, this insomniac night.
’round the hovering door and the floating window
that sometime fall low and sometime rise high
like the spots in my eyes or the dots on the dice
that roll over the table and face up realize
that the falling is fast but the waiting is slow.
breaking a vase in the bouquet of night,
marking a flower right between the eyes
while the petals, aroma float out the window,
and the rose thorns and arrow heads chopped into dice
are swept under the carpet we flew magic high.
while devils pretend to take everything slow
and keep in their pockets the gambling dice
’til everything fades in the shadow of night
and they serenade yearning outside your window
until fever compels that you look in their eyes.
“Killing me slow out the window.”
“Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes.”
Discretionary
Love , 01 October 2024.
Notes
A sestina
is a complex form dating back to twelfth century France. It has six
stanzas of six lines each, followed by a seventh stanza, called the
envoi, that has three lines. The final words of each line must be
repeated in every stanza with a specific permutation from one stanza to
the next. If we label the end words in one stanza as 1 2 3 4 5 6, then
the end-words must be in the order 6 1 5 2 4 3 in the next stanza. The
envoi must contain the same six words, two words per line. To create
this poem, I first built the envoi with three phrases from Taylor
Swift’s song. I also avoided repeating a word explicitly from the last
line of one stanza to the first line of the next; e.g., “dice” becomes
“sand ice”, “window” becomes “wind owe”, etc. In the first stanza, I
tried to engage the reader by making each pair of lines have parallel
sounds throughout the lines.
Dazzling synthetic threads of tangerine orange itched marigold flowers in front of my sister’s elementary school, orange bosomed trees my father grew backyard. poppies on Sierra foothills at the edge of At university, long afternoons I’d gaze There I gave a girl a golden band, slid On a honeymoon trip to a coastal forest we puzzled at trees
with I’d seen orange in trees before: father doubtful Long further down that road, though I nearly perished the orange-thread shirt is shed like an abandoned chrysalis.
Golden State
me happy when I was eight years old, my favorite plaid
shirt, weft with runs of vibrant red and yellow.
Rough florescent fabric beaming brilliant orange as
named: Marigold Elementary, next to Pleasant Valley High.
Marigolds by any other name would smell as ochre,
yet they flaunted pollen-heavy petticoats under
Thorny green-leafed branches flashing orbs of orange
skins we peeled away to tongue the sweet segmented
fruits as orange the fields of California golden
town if springtime rains would grace the ground transform the
dirt-dry taupe-straw grass to dappled orange gauze:
draping waves of paint daubes on the hills.
from Panoramic Way across the burgeoning bay
to the Golden Gate Bridge spanning sunglint waves
beneath a saffron sunset – which felt very romantic.
despite her eternally seeing red. She insisted
her infernos cleared unhealthy underbrush
but in truth they only burned the greenwood black.
bizarrely crenulated ashen bark, solved when slanting
sunlight erupted a rapture of myriad Monarch butterflies,
tornado-thousand poppy petals sublimating sky.
driving our sedan through raging forest fire,
fulminating furies flaying flesh from off the trees on
both sides of the highway with no end in sight.
in the flames, I repossessed the gold ring from
the arsonist girl in the home she set ablaze. The golden
bridge is sunken far below the western waves,
Yet here the winging monarch flies unbidden into
mind, every orange flutter a flashbulb memory
migrating away, suspending me in a golden state.
Stickman
Review , V23N2, 19 December 2024.
Notes
The alacritous alliterations are intended to propel the poem and give it
a rhythm and musicality along with the succession of orange imagery. I’m
especially fond of the phrase, “tornado-thousand poppy petals
sublimating sky,” because it exactly captures the image in my mind.
Notice every line is hexameter in its strongest syllables, or
at least can be read that way, again intended to propel the poem
rhythmically. Every stanza supports another; e.g., the shirt mentioned
in the first stanza is recalled in the last, the grade schools in the
second stanza are not merely to established idyllic imagery but also to
set up the transition to university in the fifth stanza, the orange
trees in the third stanza set up the contrast with orange in trees in
the eighth stanza, the poppies in the fourth stanza set up the metaphor
of Monarchs as poppy petals in the seventh stanza, and so on. The arson
is metaphorical but emotionally real.