The Moon on my Drapes

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I like this poem – no, I’m proud of this poem – and haven’t shared it with anyone in a long time. It was originally published in Pembroke, the literary journal of the University of North Carolina. I’ve never been to North Carolina, but maybe one of these days… I imagine many trees.





THE SHADOW OF FERNS

Some night you will be cold
and alone.  Maybe an animal
is crying outside or the wind
is dragging a branch of palm
across the roof and it wakes you.
If you love me, say my name aloud. 

There is no ceremony.
Just say it once or twice
into the darkness, or into the cool
electric glow of your lamp.
Say it slowly to a patch of moonlight
on the rug. 

Maybe I will hear it, as I stare
at the vague shadow of ferns
cast by the moon on my drapes.
Then say it for hope, for life,
for the distance between us.




Creative Commons License
Shadow of Ferns by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Reminder: More stuff is there for you at profiles.google.com/kkimberlin.

On the Plus Side

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I want to introduce you to another place where I post stuff. — Fun stuff!  — and invite you to join me there.
It’s the “blog” created by my posts, shares, links, etc., on Google Plus.
profiles.google.com/kkimberlin
If you belong to Google +, circle me. We can network. If not, bookmark that site anyway. You don’t have to be a Google Plus user or log in to anything to see it.
I’ve been finding myself posting things in 2 or 3 different places, to reach different groups of people. That’s a time killer. I’m done.
Google Plus is the future of sharing online. At some point, when Google + evolves greater formatting skills, it will likely replace Metaphor. … Everything is on its way to somewhere else.
For now, my writing is staying here at Metaphor, everything else is going to Google Plus. Because there’s a distinction between publishing and sharing.
Here’s a statistic for you. After 11 years and nearly 5000 posts, readership on Metaphor is averaging 11 people per day. (And I thank you!). But after 6 months on Google Plus, 1731 people are subscribed to my posts (they have me in circles which does not mean they’re reading everything I write), and it goes up daily.
A Short Video About Google Plus

For now, Metaphor is still here. So please keep reading Metaphor if you’re interested in creative writing and poetry. But if you’re not checking out Google Plus too, you’re missing some of the fun!
Here’s the link again: profiles.google.com/kkimberlin.
See you there!

Anniversary Poem

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Today is my parents’ 56th wedding anniversary. Happy day, Mom and Dad!

On the night of their 30th anniversary in 1986, I was a college student at Chico State in northern California. I had a job as a security guard, and that night I was assigned to watch a research weather station on a remote road high on the bluffs overlooking the valley and the town.

Thinking of my folks, I took out my notebook and wrote this poem, which was published in 1992 in my book Finding Oakland.

IN PASSING 

I have spent these hours
in silence    watching darkness
take this blue canyon
a little traffic
and the town lights
in the valley
A pair of mice   eyes
like black seeds    watched me
pass on a steep trail   pushing
my little light to the end
of this road
I wonder what you’ve known
together    what nights in quiet
canyons    lights passing quickly
to rest in distant places
these thirty years
At sunset I saw a hawk
on a fence post far below
spread his wings and climb
beyond the light
  
J. Kyle Kimberlin
from the book Finding Oakland
White Plume Press, 1992
All rights reserved
Download the book, without charge (PDF).
I’m intrigued by the unusual spaces that appear in the lines, for example, “in silence    watching darkness…” I don’t do that anymore; I very rarely have. So it must have been in style among poets I was reading at the time. Possibly, local writers in the CSUC English Dept. It’s not a common technique, but seems to be making some claims on the cadence. 

The Importance of Ernest

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“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”
– Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934.

Isn’t that quaint? A wastebasket! … If only Hemingway could see us now!

A New Poem

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Metronome

 

If you think about going,
or even motion, the destination
and the journey slip away from you,
becoming all of your old life
lost and buried under pavement.
But do not be still.

If you stare at the stars
or the lamp on the bedroom
table, at the stern sun
or its light turned back
from the surface of the grass,
you will sit for an age in darkness.

If you ask the clock for answers,
it will say nothing about months
and years, only the long and short
divisions of a day. Life’s ceaseless
metronome can’t promise
you are going to live.

Be still then. Hear the untuned
cello of traffic through the glass,
the sigh of the faucet, the heartache
of dogs in the distance.
This music is always around us,
a flowing and gathering cry.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
January 30, 2012

A Bit of Politics

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… if you can stand it.

Did you watch the presidential speech? I did. I started watching the enhanced web version on whitehouse.gov, which was good because of my PC monitor's better resolution and superior sound. But the stream would lock up sometimes, so I switched to TV.

I thought the speech was positive, assertive, hopeful. There was more truth in it than is usually found in a political speech. Of course, maybe we can (si se puede), but I'll believe it when I see it. This ain't my first visit to the rhetorical big top.

One thing always strikes me as funny about this event is the way the members of the opposing party choose to applaud at random, or not. There were some nice bipartisan ovations tonight. Very nice.

But I swear, if they thought it was going to cost them a dime of their lunch money, and Obama suggested it might be better if Americans don't suffer and die needlessly, those Republicans would just sit there like victims of spontaneous taxidermy.

Republicans seem to passive-aggressively hate US, while Democrats are just manifestly indifferent and morally inert. Caring is as caring does.