Thursday, October 13, 2022

GAS Featured Poet: Joseph Somoza

 

"27 years ago I used to teach English at NMSU and write poetry when I had time.  Since retiring, I get to write every day in my back yard and, afterwards, go get coffee with Jill, who’s been painting in her studio.  That’s the sweet life we somehow lucked on to."


Self-expression

 

My sinus is raspy so I try scratching it

with the back of my tongue.

There’s a slight breeze in the leaves

that might be the culprit,

though who can blame a breeze

for blowing?

It’s like expecting a dog

not to bark.

Everything has to express itself

or how would you know

what or who they are?

 

There’s this poem, for instance,

trying to express whatever

may come to mind—nothing much

that I know of so far this Saturday morning

sitting out here under a tree,

but maybe the tree will help draw me out

with his generous “ululation,” a word

that popped up just now,

though I’ll have to look it up.

 

Here in the back yard, under the sun, a breeze

blowing through the leaves, sounds

of the town all around, you feel

you’re at the center

of life, your own life included.

The mysterious Life-Source, the identity

of which, or whom, people debate,

must, ages ago, have expressed itself

by creating what slowly turned

into the world.

 



To The Source Of Energy

 

Daily am I permitted to come out

to the back yard

where the familiar locust trees wave

welcoming leafy fingers at me

and make restful shade pools to enter,

dwell in, and allow the mind to extend

through the senses and word-thoughts,

pass through the permeable air and

out to the blue infinity

some mornings marred only by rag-bits

floating seemingly close enough

to grab hold of—

 

and let the life-moments pass

before me slowly enough that I may

consider, appreciate, and shape them

one by one to the contours

of the body and mind gifted me

by ancestors eighty-one years ago

in a hillside farmhouse across the Atlantic,

a body and mind since developed

to a full person, here expressing

his gratitude.

 

                        —inspired by Robert Duncan’s

                                    “Often I Am Permitted

To Return To A Meadow”



 

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