An Hour in the Shade

Steven McCann

Description

I’ve written stories, novellas, novels and plays for decades. Only recently, have I tried my hand at poetry. As an on and off reader of that art, I always turned to the greatest lyric poets, Shakespeare, Keats and Yeats for inspiration, and found myself perplexed by modern poets of free verse, not able to grasp their music, or deeper meaning, except from a rare few. My one hundred poems here are an attempt to express my experience and impressions from life and to do so musically. Although my talents are very modest, I think if you read through this collection, you’ll find some rewarding poetry and perhaps a few distant echoes I listened for with great reverence.

Sujets

• Word
• Poetry
• Words

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669859871
• Langue: English

Extrait

An Hour in the Shade
 
 
 
 
 
Poems by
Steven McCann
 
Copyright © 2023 by Steven McCann.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-5988-8

eBook
978-1-6698-5987-1

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 12/15/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
849588
CONTENTS
An Hour in the Shade
Beauty
Journey
Thirty Years
Gifts
View
Faster, Slower
The Blank Page
A Sanctuary
Work
The Sky
A Scent
A Garden
Music
Getting Along
Leaves
Into the Sun
Ode to Coffee
Wheelchair
Sleepless Nights
Vermont
Peace and Joy
NYC
Money
Connected
Gray Skies
Winter Rain
Art for Art’s Sake
Seeing
Quilt
Dawn in Winter
Independence
Telling Time
Old Friends
Windows
Waiting
Subtle Things
Buying Things
Snowplows
To Central Park
God’s Gift
City Snowfall
Light and Shadows
Ice Cream
Survivor
March
A Fly
Clouds
Echoes
The Art Spirit
A Breath of Fresh Air
Peace
The Body and the Mind
Yearning
The Elderly
Colors
Old Man
Trees
Bedsores
The Clearest of Nights
Feeling Good
The Unpublished Writer
Old Clothes
Quiet
The Romantic
Melting Snow
Bills
Air
Healthy, Wealthy, Wise
Spring
Rhythms of the Heart
Sunset over the Hudson
The Opera Singer
Words
Slights
Fog
Late
Radio
Aging
The Carpenter
Sparkle
Fantasies
Love
Daybreak
A Gentle Breeze
Weather
Emotions
Errors
Lonely
Manuscript
A Mate
Memories
To a Sweetheart
Swamp
Shady
Pictures
Change
A Star
Companion
The River
An Hour in the Shade
How perfect! How lovely to have an hour in the shade
With sun streaming down all around you,
Under a large umbrella made
For a breeze to augment the view,
Joined by friends, fellow patients out for air,
Out for comradery, like you, without a care;
How lovely to have an hour in the shade.
How quaint and pleasant to talk of old times,
Of childhood and childhood adventures;
Ringolevio, hide and seek, games played in mime,
The neighborhood of long, long ago uncensored;
Old memories mixed with dreams,
Cake and strawberries and cream;
How lovely to have an hour in the shade.
How refreshing and balmy to forget,
The darker visions of the world;
Nightmares, pains and aches,
As if cured of all,
Of anger and need and bad weather,
As if in heaven, yes heaven;
Oh, how lovely to have an hour in the shade.
Beauty
I’ve been searching all my life,
Turning countless pages,
Looking through crowds,
And wherever I might scan faces,
My eyes peeled, my ears tuned,
My heart stirring with fervent hope,
For my prayers to be answered soon,
Yet learning the same lesson many times over.
Beauty’s gift in like a four-leaf clover,
Like the wonder of a rainbow,
Or a flower when it opens
To the chill breath of dawn,
Or a nightingale awakening the evening quiet,
Giving peace and a chance to be reborn,
Lasting a moment, a fleeting moment.
Journey
When I was very young, I often thought
About the dark infernal regions below,
About devils, pitchforks and flames,
Spooky tales from books,
From bedtime stories and Halloween games.
During the middle years of growing,
During sports and early courting,
Convinced by my own invincible glory,
Devils got pushed aside and forgotten,
Unless to frighten children,
Until life slowly changed again,
When it became clear,
There was a slimmer margin
Of remaining years,
And I began to take a closer look,
Totaling my story like a ledger book,
Bad versus good deeds,
Asking should I have lived instead like a priest,
Or emulated one of the saints or great scientists.
But years ago, my worries finally passed.
The long wearying journey is nearly through,
And I’m just proud I lasted.
Thirty Years
Is it such a long time, thirty years?
The body can grow old,
Muscles weaken and droop,
Joints creak,
The mind becomes weary
From monotonous tasks, repetition of trivia,
Bombardment of hype;
The never-ending collage of commercialism;
The spinning world of unchanging change.
And yet, and yet,
The heart remains fertile,
For rebirth and reunion.
Thirty years. Not time enough,
To make strangers of a parent and a child,
Separated by fate,
But brought together again.
Thirty years.
Not long enough to dim or weaken,
That ever-present miracle:
Love.
Gifts
When a child is offered a private room
And sanctuary from the outer world’s gloom,
A garden with warm sunlight,
Cheerful squirrels, birds and humming bees,
Adding music to grass and flowers,
And wagging pets to stay the hour,
Or if he can walk a lakeshore
With a fishing pole for adventure,
Inspecting nature’s lore
And nearby woods to enter
Where deer visit the dappled paths and leaves,
When a child can have any of these,
Gifts that nourish the soul as well as please,
In his own wonderous nook,
It’s simply a book.
View
Are most people good,
Or are they bad?
High minded, or sadly low?
Vile, or noble?
Or neither extreme,
But simply in between?
Is the view from a mountaintop,
Where you stand?
Rather than swimming beside
Them in the sea for land?
Comfort and well-being
Sweetens our hearts
That can pinch like a miser’s
When we stroke in the dark.
Faster, Slower
It’s said by experts and sages,
That humans do most of their learning
At very early ages.
But the majority, it seems to me
Abandon their curiosity
For language and nature’s gems
While jostling with school chums
When the world narrows to fits and starts,
And with growing muscles and narrowing eyes
We struggle to prove ourselves smart,
Until finally muscles slow,
Until age and the long struggle takes its toll,
Then a thousand miracles rush at us at once,
Birds, flowers, stars and the planets beyond,
With the gems of human creation,
The people who struggled alone,
While touching Heaven.
And the slower we become,
A greater miracle they assume,
Heaven growing clearer,
Our grasp sadly dearer,
Ourselves slowing down.
The Blank Page
For any artist, always the starting point,
The blank canvas, the blank page.
Yet it never becomes a trusted friend
Or an enemy,
But equally intimidating for the beginner,
Veteran, or sage;
Sometimes an exciting reminder of dreams,
Limitless and timeless,
In a healthy young body,
Or one disabled, or old, and no longer pristine;
Be you surrounded by poverty or wealth,
It makes no difference,
To the blank page, there can be no stealth;
But if the mind is still sharp and active,
There is no predicting what one can invent:
Sounds, colors, places,
And a rush of people in a steady torrent;
It’s a challenge, a call to arms,
A spur to one’s romantic instincts,
A call to duty, a call from above,
And at the best of times,
When ideas start to flow,
A call from your love;
You must answer it at any age,
The blank canvas, the blank page.
A Sanctuary
There is a little fountain not far from me,
I travel there in my wheelchair out the side,
Past the marigolds, rhododendron
And black-eyed-suzies,
That lean over touching me as I roll by.
In the center of a patio surrounded by tall trees,
With a rock wall for a border
And an iron fence beyond,
That squirrels prance along while they look down at me,
The fountain makes the gentlest gurgling sounds.
It evokes realms of peace and harmony,
Sometimes captured in scenes beyond the fence;
Strollers walking pets, children carefree,
Cyclists traversing the dappled sunlit expanse.
There is a stray cat who sometimes visits,
Pausing in her hunting of field mice,
And sometimes a bluebird or a team of finches,
That on the edge of the fountain alights.
People come and we sit on the patio peacefully,
Without alarming the small creatures of our world,
Drawn to the fountain’s musicality,
Harmonizing this quiet spot, a sanctuary for us all.
Work
To some it’s almost a joy,
Figuring, planning and prescribing;
To others, the bane of life,
Scraping, washing and cleaning;
Even when the roles are reversed,
And the first group washes and cleans,
While the second plans and prescribes,
It remains the same;
To one