March 2019

Michael L. Newell
astrangertotheland@yahoo.com

I am a retired English/Theatre teacher who lived abroad for more than two decades.  I now live a quiet life in a small Oregon coastal town.  I have work coming out shortly in Jerry Jazz Musician, Current, and Ship of Fools.  My most recent book is Meditation of an Old Man Standing on a Bridge from Bellowing Ark Press.  

 
CONCERT
 

At the piano, her head lolling back
over her shoulders into the waters
of Beethoven (like the otter beneath
the bridge yesterday, barely visible,
 
swimming on its back below the creek's 
surface with stunning grace, generating 
ripples in every direction), the pianist's 
fingers ripple over keys with mathematic
 
precision like the soft rain yesterday
with its gentle intensity falling on
the creek below where I stood rapt, 
where otter and heron (one gliding, 
 
the other motionless save for 
occasional forays of the head beneath
the surface) married elegance and swift
motion into figures which defined
 
the landscape, just as the pianist wove
speed, grace, and accuracy into waves
of sound whose currents surged, some
mightily, some softly, in multiple directions
 
while all remained part of a great liquid
tapestry, ever shifting and reforming and
shifting again, yet moving inexorably
toward a coming together which blended
 
all into one; when she approached the mighty
climax, her head fell forward and her
whole body convulsed, as the music
exploded into silence, and the audience
 
exploded into sound, and then all was silent,
silent as a creek flowing beneath a bridge
where a soft rain fell in blessing on all life
above and below the quietly flowing stream.
 
 

 
 
THE KNITTING OF LIVES
 

Some lives are carefully knitted, every stitch 
in place, every color, every strand, every weave 
chosen with great precision, yet no one cares,
such designs are arid, self-absorbed;
 
some lives are rudely fashioned without regard 
for symmetry, or any thought for design, or 
any desire to attract the eye, or soothe the mind 
or heart, they lack passion and grace;
 
other lives are elegantly conceived, every detail accounted 
for, every shape flows into the others, not a single strand, 
stitch, or color fails to create beauty, grace, austere perfection,
such designs can be admired, but not loved;
 
then there are lives casually designed, homely, the materials
chosen from whatever is at hand, suffused with rough earth 
colors, every detail, every shape meaningful, but nothing calls 
attention to itself, all is genial, generous, useful.
 
 

 
 
MIRACLES ARE WHERE ONE FINDS THEM


Mother's hands,
to the small boy
watching intently
as she prepared dinner,
 
were miraculous
as bird wings in flight,
and her transformation
of items on a shelf
 
and in a refrigerator
into an exciting meal
to be explored like a forest
was as magical
 
as the sudden appearance
of fruit on a tree or bush,
or a butterfly emerging
from a cocoon.
 
All the young lad
saw and experienced
confirmed the world
contained wonder upon wonder.

All three poems were previously published in Meditation of an Old Man Standing on a Bridge (Bellowing Ark Press, 2018).
© 2019 Michael L. Newell

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