A Poet’s Credo
I prefer clarity
To obscurity,
And images with heft
To abstractions though deft,
Brevity to verbosity.
I would rather
My writing be simple
Than magnificent,
And hope never to boast
But be as modest as
An earth worm
Or mushroom.
The Craft of Writing
My imagination is a drawer
Where I store memories
Without end
That I link word by word by word
Magically.
Memory of a Conversation With Madeline
I asked her on the phone
“How are you?”
She replied:
“Danger in the air today.
I woke to morning fear,
Passed into afternoon fear,
And came to evening fear.
Unspeakable really so
I’m going to bed.”
“I was hungry
And went down to the kitchen
But didn’t have strength
To make a sandwich
And heard voices
In the walls so
I gave up and now
I’m going to bed.”
“I tried especially hard today,
Did my best
As long as I could
As I promised
I would,
But now
I’m going to bed.”
“You called at your
Lunch hour
As you do every day.
If I answer
I am still alive.”
“Danger inside me too so
Bed is where you will find me.
Bed is the place I will be.”
Swimming in Space
Nightly, I have been swimming in space,
The safest, serenest place,
Stroking through eternity
Gracefully, smoothly, effortlessly,
Since childhood.
Alone,
Far beneath what’s above,
High over what’s below–
Towers and cities and rivers and seas–
Gusts of silver wind I breathe.
Content, blissful,
I leave my body behind
And float as aimlessly as air
I am the air,
No destination in mind.
I am as free as I think
It is possible for me to be.
I am immortal.
I am beautiful.
I will pass this way again.
Judy Wazorick
We were in grammar school together.
She had a blue eye and a brown
And sat in the last seat of the last row.
She was very shy, but when I looked at her
She smiled at me.
Now I see she won’t be at the reunion,
And I am so sad because Judy Wazorick
Has passed away.
Captives
Sarah shakes the little box
And out pour yellow seeds.
Jerry her little green bird,
Hops down from his perch
And eats all the seeds he needs.
Days and night he futilely pecks
The bars of his cage,
Recalling perhaps
How it was to caress the air
And fly far away.
Sarah boards the 7:10 a.m.
She buttons her coat and
Says “Good night, good night all”
To the other clerks at 7:00 at night,
Then eats, then lies in bed alone, lonely,
And like Jerry dreams of flight.
Gulls
Low in this sky, snowy
White, gulls pass over a field
Of yellow buttercups with flights
Of the freedom, the
Happiness, the ecstasy of winged things
That wheel around out of my sight
Toward an elegant blue lake
Where boats pitch upon silver waves
Lifted up by brisk winds.
Hemingway In Oak Park
Before he became the world’s most popular writer –
In the pre-Paris days when he was apprenticing–
Ernest Hemingway and his family lived in Chicago
Suburb Oak Park, Illinois as did my mother and
Her childhood family fifteen years later. Oak Park
Was part of my life–Sunday visits, and in my
Twenties there was Mayleen whose beautiful face
I recall.
© 2026 David J. Rogers
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