Pale
Small of height,
hirsute of face,
lightly complected beings,
a puzzle for the ages.
They’d look you in the eye in the day,
but it’s their bad light, they hardly saw you,
a lucky phase of the moon
gave them the dark eyes of moon-glow
that would help them see
well enough to build
their citadels upon tall hills.
Where once stood their castles of stone,
there is now only rubble.
Pale hands/red hearts,
they survived a thousand dawns
until a fierce reaction to their presence
only left their echo.
The air is still heavy with the rumor of their myth or reality.
Western Moon Substitute
A feather sweetly sleeping at the bottom of a cliff.
Thunder in arroyos
as clouds roll past,
with the promise of storms
coming strong and fast,
followed by an equally quick hint of blue.
Glory seen in a red moon risen.
Lightning’s song telling of what we call creation.
Pinyons framed by sunlight,
all who view them, loving that happy glow.
I heard a story once about
a western moon substitute that exists,
but there’s no such thing.
The Lost Children of the God Mars
Finding no family
because tracing a bloodline is not an option.
Finding no friends,
how will we ever know their story?
We know not where they began,
the milestones of their life,
of sin or those of innocence,
nor where any but their last
milestone occurred.
Their biographies should be an absorbing account
written upon a thousand cards,
with words that tell their human aspirations
and their callings.
Without the ability to cast counter-clockwise back in time,
to give them a third dimension,
we can only wonder,
were these sons of water or fire?
Whatever glorious distant regions did they see?
All we can ever know of them is that
each of them holds their own tiny field alone,
under flat plaques laid on the ground,
their tales now rooted in the soil.
The intimacies of their lives now only understood
by a company of angels.
In Between Worlds
I’m immersed
in a stream of unhindered fears
with no escape.
Everything I see in this panorama
has more than a single flaw,
although within each is what seems familiar enough.
There’s the wrong type of fire on the ground.
I can never see any light in the night.
The stars have withdrawn due to apathy.
The dim outline of a charcoal moon hangs above.
I’ve never seen such a satellite.
I have a body
so mythic in design
nothing could be proved its equal.
The loudest whispers
ricochet like silly pop songs
off walls in quite different ways
than I am used to.
Interestingly enough,
in an alternate place
belongs every other creation.
Illumination Lessons from Diogenes
Diogenes endured
the long walk
for the sake of
looking for an honest man.
He did so while carrying
one of the most famous lamps of all.
We should bear our own lamps,
in service to his cause...
We should seek truth before love,
and give truth to get it.
We are enduring plenty.
Human suffering is constant
because of a lack of respected truth,
a shortage of truth both brave and fundamental.
So many cities are being thrown down,
communities vanquished,
empires are being stretched
and forced into corners,
because we choose to ignore
what truth would unfold.
Let’s help each other see the light.
Linda Imbler is an internationally published poet, an avid reader, and a practitioner of both Yoga and Tai Chi. In, addition, she helps her husband, a Luthier, build acoustic guitars. She lives in Wichita, Kansas, U.S.A. Linda’s poetry collections include eleven published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep First and Second Editions; Lost and Found; Red Is The Sunrise; Bus Lights; Travel Sights; Spica’s Frequency; Doubt and Truth; A Mad Dance; Twelvemonth; Viewpoints While In Rome: and a paperback version of That Fifth Element. Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, The Sea’s Secret Song; Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry; That Fifth Element; and Per Quindecim. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at
lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.
Linda has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and seven Best Of The Nets.
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