Posts by jamesbnicola

Tree and Grass

By on Apr 2, 2023 in Poetry | Comments Off

As grass is flexible, a tree is tough: thus each endures a normal season’s wind. Another year, when one gale’s cruel enough to fell a forest, lowly grasses bend; tall, stubborn trees throb in magnificence and fight, but fail. Stumps watch the grass spring back and envy the benign resilience they know, with all their might, they sorely lack. I couldn’t help but try to reach the sky where you, my angel, lived. I loved your breeze, and shimmering in it, but was malcontent with being walked upon like grass. So I resisted and reached higher, and was rent, just as a wicked wind...

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Whether or Not

By on Nov 8, 2020 in Poetry | Comments Off

The morning thrush and lark, which greet the dawn or make it, sing no matter who is there to hear. When that resilience is gone and nature herself starts to disappear another Coming will be under way where souls of things and beings shall impart new traits to old forms to attend the day- song; air shall grow ears; soil, assume a heart; tongues, noses, fingertips and eyes shall be affixed to blades, leaves, lakes, florescences, clouds, mist: that all, in all humility, shall listen, taste, feel, savor all that is and its anthem, the morning call of birds, long after you and I are gone, and...

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The Termagant and the Task Force

By on Sep 26, 2020 in Poetry | Comments Off

She stood at six-foot-four, a miracle, a freak. Most any wooden floor she walked upon would creak. No window, porch, or door was safe from her physique. When she stomped into town, petunias would wilt and greenery would brown and pails of milk be spilt, and weaker walls fall down and have to be rebuilt. One by one, in her wake new houses rose, improved to withstand such a shake. And some thought it behooved them all to let her quake; but most were still unmoved. A Task Force was assigned to meet her face to face and ask her if she’d mind staying at her own place, but she was not...

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Anniversary

By on Feb 13, 2018 in Poetry | 10 comments

  Remember how I used to scrape off irritating little bumps as if perfect attainment of a suppler, less eventful shape, a peace at the expense of love, and armchair grace, had quite become      a sort of holy grail?   The day I finally attained the perfect peace I’d sought, I heard a voice from somewhere that explained the living’s really in the lumps.           I was struck dumb      but thought the thought...

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Rhyme #1: ‘Its use is not a burden’

By on Jul 23, 2017 in Poetry | Comments Off

Its use is not a burden but a clue There’s something after it, or me, or you. Rhyme can also make hot arguments Hop along, less hot, or harsh, or sad; Or, bind some disparate thoughts, as if they had A common quality of resonance. Young boys may have their soldiers, girls their dolls, But plastic playmates make for lonely souls; Twins have each other, though, and the delight Of tickling each other’s feet all night, Even the thought of which might be enough To thwart, in part, the flesh-inflicted curse Suggesting things are here to share, like love, A night, a couplet, or the...

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