October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Bricks will teach you everything you need, especially five stories of basic brick arranged like a complete education. Or is it nine stories of brick, tottering high among the trees and distant sky until you wonder why? Brickwork tells its own story, has its own legend. That’s how it is with the Olde Columbine schoolhouse, that mystery under blue-gray rainclouds. If you would walk by the Olde Columbine schoolhouse to observe the ruins of American history, I would be charmed, and I would not mind at all if you think of me in it laboring nights, getting it ready.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Poetry was something left in the stars like a trace of old smoke. It is the language of symphonies and the language of night in violent conversation. It is old words turned into a black art which saints may set forth like whirling fire in their religious fury. Poetry herself dreams of a complete midnight where the world’s wild colors flourish. In the waters of dawn, you may come to the garden of poetry where the flowers are reddening out whatever remains of night’s traces. Poetry is the neutron and the diamond, the french kiss under Spanish moss; brain vitamins.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Tangling across pine cone paths while the moon sets against dark indigo, wild raspberries are growing again this year. Time for the fiery poems autumn inspires. We are walking on moss beds as before. Wild raspberries are growing everywhere. We’re like little children, eating the tinted fruit under burning stars. We keep our jewelled fingers high in dancing. “Come inside cool moon shadows,” she says, entranced, “for I’ll give you awareness of rhyme’s inner sparkling.” Wild raspberries are growing again. We hold lanterns late at night over the pine cone path. Fill your apron, Carrie, full with wild red raspberries.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
I feel as I go into my room things which make me reflect upon lemon cracks in the sunlight and the burnt moon that lives in nothingness while old age comes to your mind, heart, and your soft, good face. I feel as I step into my eccentric chambers that I must find my way into a conquering eloquence, a Christmas for the veins of the new century drawn from the churchyards of the Fourteenth Century. It is just that there are not enough sonatas on the face of this planet, and I have not enough seaweed for your hair.
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Kelly: I think Kelly is striking and marvellous although the common reaction must be different than this. I think of Kelly as the all-electric person, and I think she can listen to the music of the powerlines while she is just standing on the street. Kelly reveres the same red clouds that I revere, as they dare each other to move sharply through the sky at rakish angles. But often Kelly isn’t here at all, often she is just the green leaves dancing in the giant oak which could be called Kelly green. Her favorite song is “Deep River.”
October 2000 | poetry, William B. Hunt
Black horses, bronze sunsets and crystal mountains: fields of corn: clouds catching all the light of tonight’s moon: birds with golden throat: clusters of kindly and memorable sycamores: wild cherries, wild roses and cranberries: lemons: weeping willows over honeysuckles: monarch butterflies and milkweed pods: cougars, bobcats and panthers: iris, dandelions, rhubarb: waterfalls, pools, moss: ivy and rosehips, gusts, breezes and thunderstorms: the honeybee and the hummingbird: seacoasts: peaches, pears, pomegranates: grottoes, canyons and mesas: oranges, limes, plums, dates, strawberries: fir trees, maple trees, apple trees: goldfish and swordfish: falcons and parrots, chestnuts and walnuts: almonds, Brazil nuts and hazel nuts.
