Gutter Artists
Catch us
streaming beside the street,
just below, out
of sight, see our message
in flashing lights
of liquid ink color splash
on the spare spaces
(even some taken spaces),
squint,
see if you can make out
what we have to say.
The Empress
regal
are the stars
in the lesson we learn
slide by slide
about ancient
history.
The Root of Who I Am
is in hillsides, valleys,
and rocky mountainsides,
is in surviving illnesses
and five feet of snow.
My life used to be rough,
but maybe I’ve grown tender.
Still my roots reach
way down to the stirring
foundations of the earth.
You can see them
as the river runs by, eroding
the land around, but the roots
reach up like gnarled knuckles,
stationary and purposeful.
Because We Were Stars
we could barely see
the earth.
How could we know
what was teeming beneath
us?
By our own brightness,
we missed some sights.
If you look to your left…
If you look to your right…
We learned to gaze
around and not simply
ahead or at the distraction
of what seemed bright
at the time.
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. He blogs about books at dehartreadingandlitresources.blogspot.com and publishes poetry at onpossibilitypoems.blogspot.com.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University)