Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonThe Truth about Circles
Every circle begins, continues, & ends with an arc.
The History of August
8 - two spheres stacked, one of two imperial months, July, August, the first 7th and 8th months of the year. Each year towards summer’s end, month eight stirs my meditations as we approach month number nine, on our Gregorian calendar September – Sept – the Latin...
Historians
We are so tired, we historians, so tired, hired to sanitize dated data, flushed in amnesiac American light. Our popular books see shine, everywhere, everywhere glittering, the future, even the past. NOTE: Forgetting doesn’t work anymore, and moreover, worse than...
Love – Uncertainty
Two cardinals, one red, one brown, gendered opposites, landed feet away on two thin branches of a spindly tree. They saw me, looked at each other, felt trembling, took off in flight. Was it fear, the urge for privacy, or the arboreal quake? ...
What A Poem Is Not and Is
A poem is not a decoration. not an aromatic candle, not a bauble or a trinket not an ornament for the tree, not a garland or a wreath. A poem is not décor, not a seascape over the couch, not a window curtain curtailing the view, nor a knickknack on a window sill. not...
Population
It sounds like a lot, seven billion. And there will be more. But this morning, as the sun traveled long from China, in a garden in Ohio, there was only one, one bird singing, one man hearing the song.
A Crisis of Scale
I am walking. An ant is walking too, unwavering, toward my rising, falling shoe. The ant is oblivious to the peril of two scales of the world colliding, mine sizeable, its miniscule. The ant walks on soon to be crushed, three dimensions compressed into two. I, not the...
The Boy
The child in our neighbor’s yard, a boy, ten, their son, unfolding into his father's fantasy, a blue necessity, soon to adulterate into duties and requirements the heft of his body is expected to fulfill. The boy swings; a rope – a boa, a stick – a sword, on a swing...
Six Admonitions
Do not go far from the sea and from the earth. Do not go far from the moon and stars. Do not run, slowly walk, through cloud rain. Do not build thick windowed walls against wind. Do not turn your back on the sun. Do not hide in Edison's light from night's shadow....