DRUMMER
I was always a drummer.
Five year old with a toy drum.
The electricity even then
in my hands and heart.
Restlessness finding its measure.
Something to pour itself into
like chopping your life
Into 4/4
Or making it skip
like a stone in 9/8.
Pencil beating the desk
just to get the poison out.
Hands bringing alive the
bottom of the waste can.
Zildjian cymbal ride
giving credence to
any little melody.
High pop of the mama bongo
saying the room is
already dancing.
Not a musician with
their beauty and discontent.
A drummer finds what is there.
No ending but just release
to give notice to the silence
that hey we won’t take that.
GRIEF
She arrives
a little while
after the death
and sits across
from me saying
I am the one
who must do this.
The others have left,
walking toward
the hills.
Her cloth bag
is emptied
on the carpet.
Light
inhales itself.
Darkness comes
without effort.
You must stay
with me.
You must learn
from me.
Your grief is
sunglasses
on a blind child.
Carry what you learn,
deep wound of
understanding,
farther than
the blue beyond.
Farther than
the yellow sun
can find its way.
LIFE OF
DOORS
I live my life of doors
within an amber inch of sleep
the thin light gains and loses
on my green rug like a wave.
I meet myself coming and going
only my privacy's saved.
I'd beat it down if words I chose
could hold the things
I'd have them keep.
I live my life of doors
within an amber inch of sleep.
SMALL PIECES
Give
me the wisdom
of
a flightless bird
but
let me fly
in
my dreams.
Take
me to the place
the
music started.
Teach
me to talk
the
orange language
of
the pumpkin
so
it can reveal
how
it came back to life
from
a dry seed.
Let
me love
without
purpose.
May
the wind
have
its wish
to
find somewhere
to
stay
and
the trees
have
their wish
to
travel.
May
I repeat myself
(repeat
myself)
only
when saying
what
drives my mind
above
the speed limit.
Let
the riddle
remain
unanswered,
as
we dance
to
the question.
SO MANY TIMES
So many times
I have been a bell
that cannot hear
itself.
Vibrating from the
sound
which disappears
over the ridge
like an
announcement
to what needs it.
Touching the eager
ear,
the heart’s half
which is broken
from chances not
taken.
The long road
forward
and the longer
road back
to when we were
content
just to see the
sky
dancing in
boundless wonder.
And the deep sleep
when there was
darkness
so absolute
the leaving light
kissed us
goodnight.
Geoffrey Godbey has published four books of poetry, most recently Lean Toward the Light by Finishing Line Press in 2024. His work has appeared in over 50 outlets including The Nation and The World and I. His poetry has also appeared in several high school textbooks. He was a Festival Poet for the Central PA. Festival of the Arts. U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall praised his work and tried to get him a major publisher.
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