Poetry
by James Eric Watkins
Fully-Extended
Lawn-Chair Back-Porch Star-Gazing Meditation
Hazy white, blue night
deep space light -
Smoke curls, swirls, ascends from my lips
like spirits from the earth
gathers
in clouds of contemplation
the higher they rise
the thinner and more wispy
the thoughts become, until dissipation
changing from something to nothing to everything.
Tiny yellow horseweed blooms
burst and scatter pollen on the porch-rail
sway against a starry-night
background. The wind licks
my bare skin like a lover.
Three suns die
their final expressions
written across the sky.
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I
Want to Run With Horses
I want to run with horses
spring from this passenger seat and
jump that brown-boarded fence
run beside them in the pasture
with strands of freedom bathing
in the wind, flowing, bouncing
with each gallop of their stride
the leaves exchanging the greenness
of summer for the colors of fall
we leap the fence
it being too low
to contain
our spirit
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A
New Dawn
gone are the old ways of the old days
we say goodbye to a warlord
"a new dawn of American leadership"
democracy waves like a flag
if only in my imagination
we wait for him to speak
I become overwhelmed
as the world begins to change
eyes fill with tears and I weep.
mind fills with implications
soul with pain of the past
all that pain-
in their eyes as they look up at his face
closer, so closer we are
to the dream of democracy
he laughs. smiles
as he walks off stage
forever changed.
WE are forever changed.
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James Eric Watkins resides
in Bedford, KY and works in Madison, IN.
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