Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonSanctus Spiritus
There are churches where the Holy Spirit sleeps in a vase waiting for flowers. The bells don’t arouse him, neither the fusty hymns nor the sexless sermons nor pious feet shuffling toward the meal of bread. But when a bride comes before her nuptials, tickling him with...
Flora, Fauna, Cosmos
All day far into night, our human work, recognizing resonances noticing relationships, hints, links, overtones, this related to that: milk weed seed, a brown milk cow, the Milky Way.
Unrequited
Nearby, a cemetery of solid selves, hard pressed and handy, interminable practicality, skills and disciplines I had neither attitude or aptitude to be. So I buried them. Instead, a stream, shores, banks, rocks, rapids, rebounding eddies, pooling fractured light,...
Adam’s Name
It is raining. Maybe not. This is a poem, after all, not a weather report. Some kind of report, though, water dropping through sky. Perhaps danger, a slick highway, or beauty, a rainbow, or playfulness, a child splashing mud, a mother questioning a dichotomy, and...
Next
All of my life I have lived with the word ‘next’ firmly before me. An open door, a time and place to go and do whatever comes - next. And now I wonder, as I could have wondered all along, is this the last time or the next time. I will dare eat Prufrock’s peach, I will...
Cantos I, II, III
Canto I Let’s say you woke up one morning to a world completely to your liking. You liked the news, yesterday’s, the week before, the year, centuries, and quite likely you will like tomorrow, aka the future, and the future’s future after that. To your horror you...
The Game
I am sitting at my desk writing checks to pay bills, as the kitten we foster plays with my feet, tugs at my pant cuffs, needles her way up my leg with hypodermic claws. I brush her away from the game she has made of my extremities. “My body is not a toy,” I say in an...
The Work
“Do your work," I said to the candle as I lit the wick. "Give warmth and light,” ‘I cannot,” replied the candle, “without losing myself in the flame.” “Do your work, candle,” I repeated as the candle melted away. “Do your work, man,” was the last thing I heard the...
Being Accomplished
Feeling barely felt. Thinking barely thought. Saying barely said. Doing barely done. My day is filled with partial accomplishments. Being remains, the only success. . In distilled moments I am grateful,...