An angel held Paul back.
This was not the kind of guarding
he believed a guardian angel provided.
He should have read the fine print.
The bully skated away scot-free.
The bully was a nun in a habit.
She skated on a rink not a river.
What goes around comes around.
Paul wondered if bully nuns
had guardian angels.
He did not believe the saying
the clothes make the man—
in this case the habit
makes the nun.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
I understand now.
I am slow. It took me some time.
Only the living change clothes
and addresses.
Oh! That explains why burial crypts
have many drawers—
none filled with shirts
or undergarments.
Last week I looked at your headstone
and wondered why
with all our technology
the stone is not shaped like your head.
I placed a Brooks Brothers catalogue
in your grave before the dirt covered you.
copyright © 2022 Kenneth P. Gurney
postscript
This poem is about a father—not my father.
Paul buried himself in fallen leaves.
He tried to capture something.
He tried to recapture his youth.
Traces of it existed in this action.
He played with the thought
if he fell asleep under the pile of leaves
he would wake up
at seven or eight years old.
Paul napped a little.
Mostly he dreamt his childhood.
The happy parts and imagination.
When there was a map and X marked the spot.
He emerged from the pile of leaves.
Paul reached up and drank a cup of the Milky Way.
copyright © 2021 Kenneth P. Gurney
Mr. Hays taught remedial English.
That was Glenbard West high school.
He taught us to balance our checkbooks
before we had bank accounts.
He taught us to wash laundry properly
instead of deconstruct Melville’s Moby Dick.
He encouraged us to take cooking classes
so even as bachelors we would eat right.
He taught us other things to prepare us
for the real world of having only a high school diploma.
We never learned to write a haiku,
but we all had professional looking resumes.
I was the remedial oddball,
who went on to university to earn a higher degree.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
postscript
Dianne pointed out that the word bachelors excludes girls. The remedial English class this poem refers to, my Junior year English class, was a dozen teen boys. No girls. The girls were smart enough or so diligent at homework that they remained in regular English classes.
As far as knowledge learned in high school that helped me in the real world, the stuff Mr. Hays taught us in remedial English and Algebra I & II are the things I found most useful in my adult life. Thanks Mr. Hays. Thanks Mr. Miller for the Algebra.
I try.
I try hard.
I try hard to remember.
I try hard to remember not to forget.
Today is my four thousandth
two hundred and seventy-second
day of loving you.
That is my longest streak until tomorrow.
Serendipity was our matchmaker.
Or God if you prefer.
Or the eclipsing moon you watched
out in your yard when I walked by.
There are beautiful birds in the cholla.
The front porch needs sweeping.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Paul began a war.
He began it by breaking a rule.
He bent the rule first around a column.
He measured the column for consistency.
The rule broke on a column
one inch too long in circumference.
The stonemason had only the one rule.
Paul broke it.
The stonemason swung his hammer
to break Paul’s head.
Paul saw it coming.
He dodged in time to save his head.
The swung hammer sang its desire
to impact something hard.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
I witnessed the hanging tree
and the lynching ghosts
a few miles from the family farm
on a beat-up picture postcard.
Its commercialization curses the cropland.
Such community revelations
sear a peculiar brand on sons and daughters.
Petty political purity corrodes every plow.
Such events require a prudent family
animated by the fear of retaliation,
who employ wile and manipulation
instead of Christian ethics.
Grandfather, the January snows melt
to reveal what it once covered up.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
Where the arroyo ends
at a man-made berm
a tree sings the history of the mountain
its roots pull from the earth.
It sings the migration of atoms
and electrons from ground to sky.
And the natural chemical processes
altering substances.
The tree sings to attract those
who could make this spot a place of worship,
instead of a pause along a trail
that leads farther up the mountain.
It sings of a time when trees
shepherd the earth again.
copyright © 2020 Kenneth P. Gurney
I came across the trees one night
walking in single file, abandoning the forest.
The rain fell to cover their tracks
and filled the disturbed earth where their roots once held.
They were delayed at the river
as each tree stopped to soak up water.
The river was a muddy bed
by the time all the trees forded.
I was unable to determine if there was a leader.
I thought the first tree would be the leader.
That tree wore a tartan scarf and lost Batman kite
and behaved more like a rambunctious pup.
Compared to these trees I am very young.
As the young do, I wondered what I did for them to abandon us.
copyright © 2019 Kenneth P. Gurney
Poetry decided to speak
in sign language.
It did not announce this fact
before the slam.
Poetry incorporated
the flow of limbs, hands and fingers
into the recitation
of free verse and tankas.
I accused Poetry
of turning verse into dance.
It blushed a wondrous crimson.
It spun on tiptoe and left the stage.
Poetry danced a three minute verse
for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
copyright © 2019 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 