Crossing Mass at 9th
Bert Haverkate-Ens
In the folds
of her dark
green
sweater
lie hills
and valleys
of sunlight
and shadow,
each one a
new horizon
across her
form.
She walked
ahead of me,
her face
looking forward,
pale
sneakers
marking the
pavement
with
disappearing steps.
walktokaw.blogspot.com
A bunny
writer
Bert
Haverkate-Ens
I’m a pretty
good,
if mostly
unrecognized,
writer.
My intent is
to interest people
who matter
to me
to varying
degrees
with what
interests me.
I like
working with words on a page.
I try to be
clear,
except when
misdirection suits me.
may awaken
where
straightforward prose passes by.
If I’m not
going to be well known,
I might as
well have some fun.
Expect to
wonder which sense –
or nonsense
–
I mean.
Sometimes.
I point to
an empty hat.
And if you
are going to read my writing,
you might as
well enjoy yourself.
I’d like you
to recognize my voice,
and if you
find what I have to say interesting,
well,
there’s a
rabbit.
A bit of rhyme
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Bert is my
name,
writing
poems is a game
to help my
mind to remember,
and if they’re
not rotten,
and you have
forgotten,
perchance
yours will flame from an ember.
Venn Diagram
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Imagine
an immense circle of all the poems ever written,
intersected
with a smaller circle of people
inclined
to read poetry,
the
points that would represent my writing
would
be too small to be rendered
at
this scale.
But
there would still be points of mine
in
that lens shape between circle A
and
circle B.
And
then there would be an immense amount of pointless space.
Putting
it another way,
imagine
I were a market gardener.
There
would be an immense amount
of
compost,
the
unread words tossed on a heap.
But
in raising poems,
the
cost of seed and soil is remarkably low,
and
the time, well, time is another
of
those things
you
can’t take with you.
Many
might find it odd that I would write
so
many words,
the
market for the kind I write being what it is,
yet
I find curious satisfaction
in
composing thoughts
that
will be left to decompose.
You
are looking at the harvest.
And
now I imagine your wry grin,
your
non-existent self,
in
an infinite universe in which I turn out
to
be mistaken,
not
no one not reading these very words.
This
is how we all live, after all.
I,
your pointless unpublished poet,
imagined
that it was so,
the
Venn diagram and all
and
that we are
what
we are,
and
who,
and
why
not
that any of it would stop me from thinking what follows,
after
all,
and
I smiled my own wry grin,
as
I left a sack of zucchini on your doorstep
and
I walked away.
Who
but a writer uses words
like
doorstep,
anyway?
Catching words and ideas
Bert Haverkate-Ens
You can put
bowls and buckets out
to catch the
falling rain.
Add barrels
and cisterns,
but the
drops continue to fall,
which ones,
which glassful,
will you
offer for a drink?
Poetry
Bert Haverkate-Ens
Of course poetry should rhyme,
otherwise it would be prose.
But matching the sounds of words
at the ends of lines
is not the only way
to make words rhyme.
And rhythm matters, too.
And a ring of truth.
I should have left it alone
with 'poetry should rhyme.'
walktokaw.blogspot.com
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