Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz photography

April 17, 2017 Poem: “So Many Dangers Past”

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So Many Dangers Past

To list them would fill a whole book,
those dangers we no longer fear
in daily life. Where be dragons?
All those poor village idiots
unsettling newly pregnant girls
with the Evil Eye? Fevers brought
on wings fashioned from the night air?

The adders, the Basilisks, and
the grizzlies have vanished almost
completely from our waking thoughts.
The wolf at the door is now just
the open maw of poverty
costumed in kistchy metaphor,
like older kids on Halloween
who delight in startle and fright,
wave cardboard axes bedizened
with scarlet paint, glue, and glitter;
who scowl in their mothers’ lipsticks
until we hand over our caches
of candy or dimes.

These are the times
we inhabit: danger not dead
but gone diffuse, a fog we breath in—
pernicious, radioactive—
lodging not just under our skin
but poisoning joy, our sense of fun.
Generosity murdered. Nowhere to run.

Leslie Schultz

LESLIE

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April 16, 2017 Poem: “Letter to the Moon at Easter”

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Letter to the Moon at Easter

Dear Yellow Pear,

Bitten, swallowed,
discarded, then always
waxing afresh,

Do you know you are
woven like yellow ribbon
into every Easter,
a holiday of renewal
here on Earth?
It’s true.

Your dance
keeps weaving
back and forth over
that slow and stately
ellipse, the Sun’s fiery
progress through our year.

Down here, we wait
in the frozen dark
for his coach of flaming
brandy, of sparking,
rain-soaked prisms,
to speed up.

When at last his circuit
reaches waxing equinox,
exactly balancing day with night,
then we wait next for you,
to wax fullest, shine
your soft, yellowed ivory
glow over our black seas;

Then we further wait until
we all agree with our paper
calendars and blood-soaked
human history, that we
have survived and
can enjoy one more
Sunday.

You wouldn’t understand
completely, but for us
the pink of ham and jelly beans,
the white of lamb fleece
and trumpet-shaped lilies,
and one old story of miracle
all help us trust in
our own renewal.

We want to continue.
We watch this young rabbit,
brown-speckled, hungry,
graze on the sweet green grass,
then see her hop, leap

Into a meadow of blue flowers
and disappear. The pear trees
wave white blooms heavy with scent.
We take heart, try to cast out fear,
in these pastures of

Our northern hemisphere,
and dare to hope we will still be here,
with you,
to be part of it all next year.

Leslie Schultz

HAPPY EASTER!  HAPPY SPRING!  LESLIE

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April 14, 2017 Poems: A Trio of Clerihews for Benjamin Franklin

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A Trio of Clerihews for Benjamin Franklin

Ben Franklin was no fella
to lift a limp umbrella.
On stormy days, it was he
who lofted that kite with electrified key.

Is Franklin the source of every invention?
That would be his own contention;
with lightning rods, smoke-less stoves, bifocals,
and more, he stands benefactor to us, the yokels.

Still, when I think about Benjamin Franklin,
there is something prickly and ranklin.’
Through the lenses of his inventive glasses
he seems to be laughing at us.

Leslie Schultz

Today, I followed the prompt from the NaPoWriMo site to write a little humorous poem called the Clerihew. If you are curious about the form, visit the NaPoWriMo site using the link below. I found I had such a wealth of material in my subject that I ended up writing three!

For anyone who has read the English satirical classic 1066 and All That, or enjoyed an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus or Jeeves and Wooster, you will recognize the strain of humor straight away. Harder than it looks, but fun to attempt! (Full disclosure: I am listening now to a seventeen-cassette audio book version of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. It creeps into every conversation!)

The photos below come from the college visit trip I made with Julia last year to Philadelphia.

LESLIE

“A penny saved…”

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April 12, 2017 Poem “Embellishment”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 12

Embellishment
(A Condensed Autobiography)

I first encountered coffee
in my mother’s kitchen,
thought its scent delicious
but its taste rank, odious.

It was in college that I began
savoring it, requiring it.
I learned the beguilements
of dark roast in Louisiana.
(Ah! Graduate school! Where I studied
the intensity of Community Coffee,
crystals dark as embers
igniting every morning!)

When did I first stumble upon whole beans?
Yes, in Minnesota, as a writer, grinding
out words, with serious dollars
and deadlines swirling my brain.

These points of my caffeine dream
I recall clearly. But when did coffee
reach beyond sugar and cream?
Become latté? Transform from
the quotidian nightmare
of T.S. Eliot into something
more Venetian, more sublime,
and now presented with ephemeral,
foaming, graphic appeal—all
just a short stroll
from my house in Northfield?

Leslie Schultz

Coffee with Myrna, Brick Ovens

Wishing you a good morning and a satisfying-to-the-last-drop day!

LESLIE

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April 11, 2017 Poem: “At the Theater: A Dream of Stars”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 11

 

At the Theater: A Dream of Stars

I settle in the theater, in a seat on the aisle,
with a clear view to the stage.
Then a woman claims the seat just in front
of me. Well, now I can’t see! She must be seven feet tall
with good posture. She is wider than a doorway,
her hair dense with leaping curls. The only thing
missing is the straw hat with a feather or flower.

Somehow, I know she is wearing wrist-length, white
gloves.And polka dots. She listens intently, never whispering
to her companion, who is, maybe, the little man shot
from the cannon in another show. I crane my neck,
first one side, then the other, glimpsing the movie
in fragments. She has every right to be who she is
and where she is, but why am I here, so blinded? Then

I know: we are in a cave, both staring at Plato’s flickering
fire, she the movable wall between me and the cool
illusory flame. We are shadow puppets at rest. She
is the band of silhouette circling the planetarium’s
domed screen. I have only to look up or down or
elsewhere— into the roiling heart of me?—
and peer through the dark lens of poetry.

Leslie Schultz

Wishing you a day when new planets swim into your ken!  Leslie


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