Poetry Samples

by Blake Steele

May be copied and used freely.

Please identify author as is normal.

For publication rights please contact author.

These are a sampling of poems for adults that span a period from the mid 1980’s up to the present period.

There are samples of children’s poems written in the late 80’s and early 90’s on the Children’s Poetry Page, excerpts from my book, Wild Sanity on the Wild Sanity Page, and an Archive of selected poetry collections on the Poetry Archive Page. You can also listen to many audio performances of poetry and music on the Audio Poetry Page.

Children’s Poetry

CLICK HERE

Wild Sanity

CLICK HERE

Audio Poetry
CLICK HERE
Poetry Archives
CLICK HERE

POEMS

A SONG OF SIMPLE, INTELLIGENT AND PASSIONATE PEOPLE

The room smells of fresh whitewash,

(some old woman spattered it with her broom),

a quiet-hearted old man rocks before a sage-wood fire

caroling prayers under a crescent moon.

A child plays with tin soldiers upon a hardwood floor,

laughing at that glad angel seen dancing through the door.

Hot bread steams upon a table, and a glass of claret wine:

John the farmer boy crushed grapes with his own feet

and plucked them from his own vine.

The well outside is brimming deep and silvery to the eye,

not a ripple mars its liquid sheen--it reflects a spiritual sky!

And out amidst the sheep, two lovers lie in hay,

undulating like the summer sea, murmuring beauty until day;

while down in a desolate valley, deep in the heart of the starry night,

an old priest chants praises from his resonant soul--at rest.

His eyes are moist with a heated light--

everything he sees is blest.

SINGING TO A VICTIM

OF A RECENT, TRAGIC AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT

St. Charles Hospital, Bend, Oregon

May 14th 1992

I quietly entered her room of pain,

a guitar of love in my hands.

Her hands trembled.

"Music", she said, "Music,

my second love."

I was unaware and spoke in haste,

"And what is your first love,

if I may ask?"

She twisted upon her hospital bed,

shook her head a little and did not speak.

Her softening eyes filled with her terrible secret.

It was a love song I sang her,

written by a young woman

who had wrestled with life and death

until death got her body

and life took the rest of her.

It was a real love song,

and so, spirit-born,

it flowed into spirit.

The woman drank it

and broke into tears.

She held my hand when I was done

and her love and pain was so great

it took me by surprise!

I left her room, shaken!

and was informed by a passing,

compassionate nurse

that the woman's husband

had just died.

SERENADING GORDON IN THE CANCER WARD

St. Charles Hospital, Bend, Oregon

May 14th 1992

He was an old man,

pale and rickety, with one eye.

He was already mostly gone.

Seemed to be barely hanging on.

I sang him a love song

and he showed little emotion

on his diminutive face.

When the song was done

he looked quietly upon me

and spoke, "I devoted...

Is that how you say it?" he asked,

searching for a word.

"I devoted that song you sang

to my brother-in-law."

I spoke to him the word, dedicated.

"Yes," he answered, "I dedicated that song

to my brother-in-law.

He just died today, right here..."

He pointed out of his room

and down the empty hall.

I held his frail hand

and squeezed it,

hoping I didn't cause him pain,

for his hand bones were like bird's bones;

they felt honeycombed

and light as feathers.

"Do you sing to people here for money,"

he asked, "Or so you can be with God?"

What a perfect theology

this little man held.

Had he always known it,

or had a passing angel just whispered it

upon his inner ears?

"To be with God," I answered,

and walked out of the hospital

into the warm night air

to gaze up at the full moon

shining in a mist.

"The moon is like a soul to me," I thought.

"Tonight it is full and beautiful,

reflecting a delicate light."

It would have been a good night

for Gordon to open up his hand bones

like bird bones and feathers,

and rise up out of his rickety old body

to fly...

The sky seemed right for it.

UPON WITNESSING THE DEATH OF AN OLD MISSIONARY

I've heard stories of old age,

(what a clutter of confusions),

some say that dust can never blow to stars,

others speak in rhymes and dream.

You say you don't believe God rests in bread

or breathes in cage of blood and clay?

Did you ever yet see what perhaps you could

if you prayed as prophets pray?

All things aren't as all things seem,

though countless cloudy peoples say,

"It's fools that speak in rhymes and dream."

But I have seen a withered man

lift his wilting, weathered hand

to recount all his repertoires--

then beat his wings towards distant stars!

MEDITATIONS UPON RELIGIOUS STATUES

These saints, standing in cold silence

with frozen hair

and fixed eyes,

weep within their stone bodies

that we have made them thus...

for their hearts are far away:

cart wheeling down green hills;

swimming naked with cherub children

in silver streams;

climbing huge, shimmering trees

with six-winged seraphim;

throwing their arms open

to the wild winds of God;

laughing at the beauty of stars;

and praying for us in heaven's ecstasies

that we would wake up!

raise our voices against injustice in the world,

learn to cherish what is mortal,

and come to them at last--

through love's fullest surrender--

ready to preserve at all costs

heaven's freedom!

AUTUMN ENCOUNTER

I was blessing a great pine tree

and being blessed,

the silver waters moving

from human to tree,

from tree to human core

and the sky spinning above...

and the sweet grasses of earth

drifting tiny, delicate jewels

of autumn seeds in the air,

and my beard seed-full

from having nuzzled the earth,

telling my old mother

I love her with my body.

And a gray squirrel eating pine seeds

from a cone, like a hungry child

ratcheting a cob in its hands rapidly

in a 4th of July corn eating contest:

and the seeds spinning down in whirliggigs

into my hands until the squirrel

finished and poot! tossed the shaved core

of a cone carelessly over its shoulder

and down upon me.

Then the squirrel dives upside down

and starts coming down

that huge, gray tree trunk highway

I was hugging,

its scrawny legs stretched

wide like a spiders,

like a circus safety net of fur,

like a tense glove,

toes miraculously gripping

the bark, moving in quick, jerky

sporadic spurts, head first

coming right at me, face to face,

and me in wonder, but the worm of my mind

thinking what if it should come right up

and bite my nose!

And the squirrel, bobbing and staring,

suddenly unsure if I was a tree...

Perhaps I bore the blessing

of one and it couldn't differentiate.

And I speaking softly, calling love

upon it, and the squirrel jerking this

way, scimp, fwrimp, around the tree,

pip, up to peer, making me out to be a man,

and upside down twirling,

suddenly shot into another tree,

a couple scrimps, and scoots, and shibang

on legs that couldn't be seen,

even as a blur, dipping down into long

sensual grasses!

And I laughing, and leaning,

and thanking the God who breathes

though all things and me.

I WANT TO FIND THE SOUL OF DOSTOEVSKI

I want to find the soul of Dostoevski,

and absorb the ancestral home of Tolstoy;

I want to deepen my soul

with words which weave through the remembrances

of those old women who felt the essences

of master men;

I want to wander into thick,

black stands of trees

with rough peasants

who still cut logs with axes.

I would listen to each strike of steel

echo into cold silence...

I want to feel the bells

upon their horse's bridles

ring within my spirit!

--it would be a subtle ecstasy;

it would inflame me

until I was driven

to bury my face into snow drifts

upon the Caucus plains.

Oh, that Mother Russia

might let me suckle her leathery breasts!

Perhaps she would let me sit for long hours

within her ancient churches

until frankincense

slowly soaked into my soul

as it has infused the wood of icons

over centuries.

I would sit for years

in the fragrant silence of her churches

until I heard what a soul should hear.

Then I would sing an unknown tongue

into the blue smoke

which drifts amongst the rafters

of village taverns

until white doves came down

from high metal roof tops

unto the heads and hands

of the people.

GOD AND US

God is our silence

and we are His song.

ROSE BREATH OF THE WEST

Why not live every day

in ecstatic emptiness,

in Yeshua’s flowing fullness?

This sweet gentleness

of rose breath

is God's rest:

It is the mitzvah of the Hebrews,

the flowering grace

in Francis's holy bosom--

it is the fragrant, unwavering flame

around which Rumi twirled.

GOD IS CREATIVE GENIUS

God is pure, creative genius:

what else can I say about this One

but that?

When God wells up,

floods down,

envelopes in silk,

trickles through the naked core,

the images flow:

seeking to express

the transparency of the shiver,

the soft blow of rose breath

in hot blood and bones.

LYRICAL POETS

Have you noticed that lyrical poets

write about crickets and straw and woman?

that lyrical poets write about stones,

and river grass, birds and breezes

and woman—for lyrical poets

are poets in love, flinging themselves

into the wildest visions of their minds

to become it—encountering God.

Have you ever noticed that God

writes about crickets and straw and women,

and stones, reeds and river grass,

birds and breezes, and women?

For God is a God in Love

and lyrical, and laughing,

a poet, an artist, a maker,

flinging Himself into the wildest visions

of His mind to become it—

encountering us.

I REST IN A DREAM AND THE DREAM MOVES ME

I rest in a dream

and the dream moves me.

Please don't despise the images I speak...

they may be truer

than you think.

A judge once said

that God is our Judge;

it was a king who said

that God is a great King;

and a Lover who sang

that God is love.

Perhaps God

was once

a slim young girl

who let her clothes slip from her

and wore only

a holy robe of sunlight

on the battlefield.

But this is a poet's dream

who longs for sexual innocence

and to say it, I feel shy.

Yet, I've heard God say,

"When the soul slips naked

from the body...

no one is shy."

WE HAVE WAYS WE MOVE UPON

AND WITHIN EACH OTHER

We have ways we move upon

and within each other

that are rarely said

by anyone.

But we can look through

another's eyes

into vast, spacious places

beyond the bounds of sense.

The passage there

is always open,

though we be a closed door.

Do we know the mystery of anyone, anymore?

Someone may suddenly run out there

naked, like a young child