Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonA Kind of Homecoming study guide
This is a philosophical poem. It has to do with our relationship to the earth. Not only is the earth our current address, it is our mother. We are humans, earth beings, raised up out of the humus, the soil of the earth. The second biblical creation story, Genesis...
A Kind of Homecoming
"Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. The spoken...
Questions of the Past
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” William Faulkner Requiem for a Nun Does the past have a future? Which part of the past is present? What part of today’s past will be present when today’s present is past?
Going, Going, Gone
Warming techno-sullied seas, styrofoamic waves, everlasting straws, pissed steroidal rivers bulking up oceans.. An island gone, then two, a peninsula, Florida, Baha California, Cape Cod, Kamchatka, down under. Hobart’s new citizen fish. Snowy egrets flock deserts. No...
So I Go
Snow bends dry winter weeds. I remember my death quite clearly, it will be in the future, like every live person I know. I think on a Sunday, the fourth Sunday in March, the month of my birth, eight decades past my single first day. To be born into time, this I have...
Remember the Jukebox
Sitting in a booth in Irv’s Mountain View Café, Columbia Falls, Montana, 1959, I was faced with choices: food, drink & song, each for a price, a cola, burger, fries, and the jukebox, a high caloric intake for the gut & ear. A quarter for doo wop or good old...
Complete Dignity
Our cat Matisse stretches on the floor long, lean, luxurious, as if being pulled by opposing forces nose tugged away from tail just to the snapping point, lengthening, curving until he is a fury apostrophe displaying poise and grace. The pulling comes from forces...
‘If’
If I say ‘if’, a condition is placed. There will be consequences. If these demands are not met, if it doesn’t rain, if you loved me, if you do that one more time, if we lived in the best of all worlds, if two cars drove straight toward each other, one at 20 one at 40...
Cellular Memory
Ted and Sarah live near a silky sand beach. They never go to the beach, a convenient ten minute drive. They could go. But they don’t. They do not discuss going on a sunny day and decide not to go. The question doesn't come up. What prevents them from enjoying the...