Five Poems by Joshua C. Frank

 

The Campfire Sing-Along

Four families sit down in a circle at camp

By pines lit by sky white with stars and a fire

And, one by one, people start singing along

When one of the fathers picks up his guitar.

The children, excited to hear the guitar,

Will always remember that night in the camp

When all of the families were singing along

As one single voice that encircled the fire.

The logs turn to ash; night is fading the fire.

They stop one by one, with detuning guitar

And voices too tired for singing along,

And children get carried to tents in the camp.

The fire put out, all are plodding along

In the camp, with their minds filled with song and guitar.

The Banned Barbie

For a little girl’s birthday, I shopped at the mall

With my mother to pick the most suitable doll.

We went to the Barbies and searching we started;

Pink boxes stood high like the Red Sea when parted.

A doctor, a teacher, an athlete, a nurse,

A corporate executive, options diverse,

The bewildering array still was missing one other:

I noticed that Barbie was never a mother.

No baby, no stroller, no pregnancy belly,

No children around but a sister named Kelly.

The boxes said, “You can be anything,” but

The noblest career as an option was cut!

Yet I’d love for a little girl somewhere to learn

That her motherly wishes aren’t cause for concern

Or a childhood phase she’ll be leaving behind,

But a dream to encourage, and how she’s designed.

Back to Sleep

In very early years, now far behind,

When I returned to earth at midnight deep

From nightmare scares within my frightened mind,

My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

I hid in bed from monster and from man

As blackened shadows seemed to slowly creep,

But once I finally to her bedroom ran,

My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

No sounds outside from people, beasts, or cars,

Her voice and arms would soothe me as I’d weep;

I saw her by the light of moon and stars—

My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

The happiest of moments in this was

When I collapsed into a sleeping heap,

Contented, safely dreaming, all because

My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

Colourblind

I know a poet dealing with derision

For writing of a woman’s supple skin

Whose hue he hopes will fill his field of vision—

To say what colour’s now a racist sin!

For when he praised her cherry-blossom pink,

They cried white privilege, said it’s lacking grace,

Yet when it’s skin of maple or black ink,

They censure him for fetishizing race!

Alas, a man can’t wax poetic when

Her skin tone is the trait he dare not name.

I miss the golden, olden days when men

Wrote brazen praise of women, free of shame!

At least the man who loves a girl with freckles

Can rave about her pretty little speckles.

Last Visit to the Beach

The beach, untouched by Time throughout the years

As millions of waves washed from the sea,

As Time transformed me, now no more a boy,

Where I would walk each season on that sand,

Each decade by my side a different dog,

Still looks the same as we make tracks together.

The houses on the cliffs still stand together;

The restroom hut’s unchanged in thirty years,

But smaller since I went with my first dog.

The little village by the wind-swept sea

Stands still, unlike an hourglass’s sand;

It’s I who changed since I was just a boy.

My mother took me as a little boy

To this same beach, and here we’d play together,

And then she’d read a novel on the sand

For well-earned rest back in those early years.

She never worried; she could always see

Me watched and herded by my boyhood dog.

Some years went by; I had another dog.

The first would know me only as a boy;

The second one recoiled from the sea.

The people who’d come here with me together

Had slowly disappeared throughout the years—

The sea had washed their footprints off the sand.

Now, after thirty years, I cross the sand

And pass the people, with another dog.

It’s sad to climb the crags of early years—

Too much departed since I was a boy.

No humans with me walk the sands together.

The crowd recedes; just me, him, God, and sea.

There’s nothing left for me here by the sea

Except to walk more dogs upon the sand—

The people here and I don’t go together.

The only friend still with me is my dog.

I don’t like what they taught me as a boy—

I can’t turn back from truth I’ve learned these years.

I see the sea the last time with my dog;

I’ll leave the sands I ambled as a boy

To find a wife, for many years together.

Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives in the American Heartland.  His poetry has also been published in The Society of Classical Poets, Snakeskin, The Lyric, Sparks of Calliope, Westward Quarterly, New English Review, Atop the Cliffs, Our Day’s Encounter, The Creativity Webzine, Asses of Parnassus, Verse Virtual, The Asahi Haikuist Network, LEAF Journal, and the anthology Whose Spirits Touch, and his short fiction has been published in New English Review, The Creativity Webzine, and Nanoism.