Vincent’s Comments (group member since Nov 22, 2011)

Vincent’s comments from the Q&A with Vincent Lowry group.

Selfie

Maybe our hope is to capture
that likeness which eludes us,
that core of self which sails on boats
too distant on the horizon to
know if it they are coming ashore
or drifting farther into the void.

We could easily say it's the ace
in an unfair hand that an ex-lover dealt to us,
an unexpected trump card
laid on a timeline table
next to a bronzed queen sipping margaritas
with her court of muscles
on a beach too pristine for the eye to absorb.

Perhaps it's just our recognition of mortality,
of knowing that moments will thaw and spoil
unless we freeze them on our phones
and pack them in airtight digital containers
too small to store our aging organs,
our gravity-bent bones.

Is this our immortality?
A puckered face in the driver's seat
of a new convertible?
An awkward pose beside a friend
with whom we lost touch thousands
of updates ago?

Will the graduating class of 2150 really want to
see so many pictures of the dead?

When the Ice Returned

I would let the crisp morning
air fill my lungs in relief when
seeing the ice I thought I'd lost
sparkle in glory upon the battlefields
of my nightmare.

I would rise to the new sun
like a child on a birthday,
my thoughts racing far from the grasp
of the frozen shelf
breaking away from her mother
and bleeding into history.

I would skip under a rediscovered sky,
bluest of sea blues,
and toss my worries of an
uncertain tomorrow
into the river of posterity.

I would rake the footprints
shadowing the path of modernization,
content in the trailless path
behind every achievement,
every step of success and advancement.

I would undershoulder this cloaked weight,
piling for years,
bending my spirit like hunched back,
and run in the meadows
of a future abloom with promise.

Will you wake with me?

Thank you, Karen! I'm always happy to share the poems with you! :)

Thank you, Andrea!

:)

Sparklers in Virginia



If only these rose petals down
this aisle weren't so far away.
If only this love sealed before us
on an impossibly green hill
promised the blossoming of something vernal and unpredictable for all hearts seeking to fly.

A gray Virginian sky looks down
on children transfixed by a fountain's magic.
Photographers surround the jocular youth, freezing the moment for a
time when the day is a book of
memories.

Night falls.
Music fills the reception
as candles flicker off faces
not seen in seasons.

A toddler finds his way to the
dance floor, breaking the ice for the adults who aren't as brave
with their feet and hips.

Soon moves without a name
pour from bodies without a care,
releasing the worries of yesterday and tomorrow.

Sparks from sparklers rain down on the bride and groom as they duck and thread between family and friends.

A new love soars off into the evening.

I think the fallen soldiers of Gettysburg, buried just hours from this hill, fought for a peace like this.
I think their valiant hearts during the darkest final hours wanted to fly
in this sort of grand freedom.
I think they would have loved to see their children play in that fountain, or tested their shoes on that dance floor, or held that raining firework high for their newly married hosts.

And there's no doubt Lincoln would have held the sparkler too.
Perhaps he would have lifted it higher than the rest of us given his height advantage and the grand triumph of the dream now realized before his eyes: a simple wedding in a state at truce,
a snapshot of a democracy with a new birth of freedom many generations in the making.

We are the result of their struggle,
of their vision of an America rededicated to its original promise.

If love is the greatest power,
then a moment committed to it seems the finest example of their honorable lives and what they created for ours.
We invite them to have a look at the beauty they forged.
We request their presence at our
sacred gathering made possible
by their sacrifice.

Let the lights we hold together
never extinguish,
shining the path of rebirth for a union made whole.


(c) 2014 by Vincent Lowry

Thank you, Andrea!

The Gale

The poet's bones were unearthed
some twenty thousand years after 2013,
the date his heart became one
with the starry silence, the endless black vacuum.

Watches filled the rib cage,
hour hands pointing every possible direction,
a six o'clock aiming at where the aorta
had once channeled life,
a three o'clock tracing the path
of the now nerveless vertebra.

A femur lay atop a fractured humerus,
both separated in life and critical for survival,
now joined forever as a cross
and serving the world of the departed.

The only surviving words of the poet
bled from a yellow bank receipt:
hand written,
last drops buried in the heart of his skull.

"Unfinished"
What of the ocean song,
the hymn of forgotten tides?
What of the felled trees laid long,
the chasm of their birth one finds?
What of night and lovers embraced bare,
the desiring souls searching truth?
What of this writer's hair made fair,
the yesterdays bought with youth?
What of the stars and worlds beyond reach,
the distant lands forever remained locked?
What of the one world we leech,
the home our actions have mocked?
What of the plans yet to be,
the reign of tomorrow's child?
What of these hands I see,
the unfinished work which has piled?

Oh how this gale tries my spirit.

Hi Christine,

Welcome to the group!

Same to Boyko and Karen!

:)

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Here is the link to the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Surfing-Seconds...

Christine,
I'll send you an email so we can work out getting you a signed copy. :)

Finding a Way

You can compare it
to a lone Soaptree Yucca,
dune perched,
roots stretching into the earth
for rare drops of nourishment,
liquid treasure from a pregnant cloud.

You can turn to water itself,
seeping through cracks thought sealed,
boring through rock mountain high,
carving canyon cathedrals in its wake.

Even the air will suffice.
Drown it with a bag and watch its grand escape,
first slipping through holes unseen,
then rising to the surface
to rejoin its rightful place,
free between ocean and stars.

Such is the temple of the universe, a timeless, unbending order.

And this is true of love.
That a heart, once lost, shall discover its path again,
choosing the same holes,
slipping between the same unseen cracks.
You will not know its route, nor its hour of arrival.

But love will find a way back to you.

I'm glad you liked it, Andrea!

Thank you, Andrea :)

I think anyone who has loved and lost can relate to it.

Lucky as Hell


Maybe it takes a row
through the darkest rivers of your soul
to discover the purest truth
of life's hand.

If water was within reach
and at your command at all times...
If its clarity was like liquid glass,
free of poisons, abundant in flow.

If food stood from toe to head
at a grocery that was just breaths away...
If produce spread before you in a rainbow,
and the hardest decisions were one of choice, not necessity.

If a ceiling shielded your brow from the sun's rays
and diverted the rain to your tended gardens...
If you had a small castle to call your own,
a bed that welcomed a theater of dreams...

If your special evenings were filled with family,
your ordinary days with friends...
If you had at least one person to pour your spirit into,
and had them do the same in return...

If war was an unwelcomed visitor in your neighborhood,
and so too were intolerance and violence...
If trees laid shadows on your streets,
and grass carpeted your yards.

If the laughter of children graced your ears,
and also the occasional whimpering of bruised elbows...
If music's grand jukebox was just a click away,
and the words of authors and poets the world over.

What would you call your life?

Letting Go

I know not why our spirits were pierced
and hurriedly tied together
when there were countless other prospects,
a field of blooming combinations,
each petal bending toward the guarded light.

And my ignorance is king
when I stop to ponder how
our rope unraveled
and dropped us back into a world
where the spring of man

had sprouted between the cracks
and taken hold on these shifting walls.
Doesn't that kiss belong to us?
The one lovers stamp on each other
when gazing at the Pacific from our

shadow on the pier?
Isn't that laughter echoing from the heights
of the Ferris wheel a product of theft,
wrongfully lifted from our lungs
and jubilantly exhaled from a couple

too young to recognize their cruel display
of blindness and indifference?
To get to the marrow of it,
we need only to witness the dancers to our song.
Oh how their feet drift on the wings

of united hearts...all while
our unfaithful tune plays on without end
or remorse for any ex-lovers who cross her path.
The broken ones feel our ache.
They too remember the beats and chords

that swept them from life's struggles,
and into the arms of an infinite domain.
There were no boundaries in that heaven.
No gates. No doors. No eyes save the
pair that had fixed onto their vulnerable core.

I miss those eyes.
I wonder where they went, why they fled,
and what they see now?
Are they in my same industry,
the business of washing memories?

Of letting go?

Thank you, Andrea!

Thank you, Andrea! You are welcome. :)

Rowena River House


The wind represented time.
I didn't understand the connection
when my bones were still stretching,
when the road ahead
far exceeded the path already taken.

The gusts never slept,
not with my shadow,
not under the watchful gleaming eyes
of a spying universe.

Gales funneled through the gorge,
swiftly west to east,
as if fleeing the ocean's parental
scolding and inevitable punishment.

Was each breath beside the river house
one day caught in the sails of
the gorge surfers?
Or ten years compressed into the memory of a day?

How is it so many sunrises
were blown like clouds from the
horizon, and countless sunsets were
absorbed by these waters?

I know this breeze,
welcoming my overdue return,
holds the answer.
It finds me on the deck,
sitting with friends who
echo the same questions.

We stare at a new generation
on the river, their voices and laughter
muffled by distance.
Soon it will be dinner,
then dreams.

And the wind of tomorrow and yesterday.


(c) 2013 by Vincent Lowry

Thank you, Ann!

I'm glad you like both :)

Night


Make us kids once again.
Smooth these wrinkles
with your starry wonder,
the magic of the unseen.

Erase the scars of days
piled too high to summit,
of memories best
left in the penetrating light.

Return the love of possibility,
the hidden forest that beckons our heart,
the black sea that holds a hundred treasures,
a thousand journeys.

Let one star die on the horizon
so that the birth of countless
suns may be born in our eyes,
flickering dreams yet to be.

Conceal what is known.
Blur what is clear.
And when day catches us again,
let our eyes be closed in a moonlight bliss.

(c) 2013 by Vincent Lowry

Thank you, Andrea!

I'm glad you liked both :)