Early Morning Thoughts

It’s early in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, but not because I was hungry. These poems need very little explanation. I’m so very fortunate to have shelves of books, a good home, three meals a day, and people who know where I’ll be sleeping tonight. It’s not just the poor that need you today. Somebody you know is lonely, or just needs to hear your voice. Take a minute, and we’ll talk more next time.


Get Up

Get Up
GET...... UP, you’re thinking about the game anyway.
You’re looking sideways at Janet Thompson’s legs
anyway.

Get Up
Walk back the aisle. Don’t think about
the stares, the whispers, or the preacher.
Push open the double doors at the back of the sanctuary,
run down the limestone steps, across the flagstone walk,
past the parking lot full of shiny cars, and up the street.

Run to the corner where the old woman
sits on the grate, wipes the snot from her nose,
cracks the snow from her hair.
Walk up to her and beg her forgiveness,
rip your pocket off, and give her all the
money you have.

Maybe
Maybe
Just maybe then, you’ll really know what
to pray for, and what the truth is.



Hollow People
Cincinnati 1972

The hollow people of the city are kept north of 13th street by police batons and threats, where they wont spoil the store windows and the suits can walk to lunch without seeing reminders of the real world.

Up there above the parkway where the canal used to be they wait for lunch at the Catholic Church and sleep on cots in the mission. Others who know the secret, walk along the Race Street wall and fade from view into the shadows where the transformer vault is hidden beneath the sidewalk.

Under cardboard they are warmed by the green boxes and sleep to the hum of electricity flowing through copper coils. A few blocks away the office workers, cubical sitters, and bank presidents are giving them comfort by just turning on the lights.

Finding Water

I remember when my Grandfather and Uncles decided to dig a well up the hill from ours. We had a wonderful spring that not only gave us clear, clean water, but also supplied a number of other families. Our house was on a road that had been the warrior and hunting path from the Ohio River camps and lead south to the Cherokee Lands. The spring had always been there, and when my family built the house it gave us cool water and gave me my first bath when I was born in the upper bedroom.

On the day they were going to work, the spot was found, and they started to dig. It was hard work, and they struggled, handing out buckets of clay and rock, until the water started to seep in.

Years later I was reading my diary, and started a poem about that day, but mostly about the gift of finding water. I’ve seen men that were able to cut a willow fork, hold it in two hands and walk along until it pointed to the earth. That’s where the water was to be found. I’ve also seen men that were able to take two steel rods and bend them into the shape of an “L.” They held them in their hands and walked, until the rods crossed, and indicated the spot. This was used in place of metal detectors to find iron pipes in the ground.

Anyway, I started a poem about a Water Witch. After 20 stanzas it was so long that I couldn’t take it anymore. I put it away, and decided it was a lost cause. Later, some other poets and I were talking and it was suggested that sometimes a poem chooses the form it should take. I recovered the notes, started cutting the poem, and getting rid of useless words and information. Then, I put the phrases down that really mattered, and decided that it was a Pantoum. I love the way the repeated lines set up their own rhythm. It worked!

You can see the pattern, and the repeated lines in this 12 line Pantoum. Remember, each line in a Pantoum must be able to stand alone, but also must be pertinent to all the other lines. Go ahead, get out one of those poems you are struggling with, and look at it in the light of a different form. See what happens.



Water Witch

A gift passed down by blood.
Hands born to hold a willow fork.
Seeking water hidden under dry sand.
Finding the life giver that cools the soul.

Hands born to hold a willow fork.
Quivering over the earth as he walks.
Finding the life giver that cools the soul.
Giving and giving after he is gone.

Quivering over the earth as he walks.
Seeking water hidden under dry sand.
Giving and giving after he is gone.
A gift passed down by blood.

Robert W. Kimsey

Mountain Stories

Hey, I hope you’re having a great day. I got up this morning and went birding with some friends. It was a good day, with some suspected birds and some surprises. We had wonderful views of a Blue Grosbeak. One of my friends and I wrote a little book on birding a few years ago, and the darn thing is a steady seller. It just goes to show you that if you have something you love, there just might be a book in it.

I’m in the coffee shop this morning. Couldn’t be this close to town and not have a fresh cranberry muffin and a cup of coffee. So, let me tell you what I was thinking about last night.

I’m concerned that you aren’t writing. So many of my friends are having trouble. Me included. With me it’s usually temporary, and happens when the trout are rising to the fly, and I feel the call of cold streams. I want to encourage you, and I hope you will do the same for me. We are the storytellers. I still believe that if we take away the computer, cell phone, and all the other “stuff” we carry on our belts and in our bags, we aren’t that far from the fire. We are at our best when we’re looking into the flames and telling those stories we’ve heard, while we add our own twist to the mix.

When I was a child I remember family gatherings, and after supper the kids played while the adults gathered around the stove and told the same stories that I’d heard for years. I’d sit on the steps and listen, and when I was older they were the fuel that fed the fires of my imagination.

Last night I was going through my poems that I might use for a reading, and came across the poem I’ll share with you today. There are a lot of stories in the mountains, and one of the special ones for me is the story of Jack-O-Lantern. It’s used to explain the lights that drift through the hills and hollows. Some say it is swamp gas, others say it is something else. In the southern mountains I’ve heard the story of a man who was so mean that when he died and went to hell, the devil gave him an ember and told him to go and start his own place, cause he wasn’t welcome. That’s him in the mountains at night, still looking.

In Kentucky we had another story about two lost men. I’ve always had the story in mind. Many years ago I went back to the place where I was born, and the house was gone, and as I stood there looking at the spring, and the hills where I played, this poem started to form. Maybe you have visited a special place and felt the same as I did on that day. If you have, get that paper out and see where it takes you.
Here’s the poem.



Jack-O-Lantern

In the hollow there is a story.
A tale for children, of a man
whose friend was lost.
He took a lantern, went to find him.
Neither was ever seen again.

On crisp fall nights the light from the
lantern can still be seen
on the Kellen Hollow ridge,
down the slopes of Grave Yard Hill.

It is me.
It is me.

It is me out there scanning the dark,
one hand in front hoping for a warm touch,
the other raised to cast the golden light as far
as a fishing line into the darkness.

It is me looking frantically about while
the children down below are told the story.

It is me.
It is me.

Searching for the family that is no longer there.
Searching for the home that is no longer there.
Searching for the fire that has long since gone out.

It is me.


Robert W. Kimsey

Words and Phrases

I carry a reporter’s notebook with me at all times. I am always on the search for words and phrases I can use. You never know when they will grow into a poem. I hear them from people in the coffee shop. I see them as I read poetry by authors I admire, and sometimes if I pay attention, they come to me in other ways.

I had a dream one night that I was climbing a hill overlooking the ocean. There were others around me, but they appeared as brightly colored ghosts in the air. We were all moving toward a desk that sat on the ridge. When I got there it was full of pigeonholes that contained pieces of paper. I took one and it had a phrase on it. I could see that the others were taking one also, but some were letting them go, and they fluttered over the edge into the ocean.

Today, look for a word or phrase that you like, and see where it takes you. If you can’t think of one, call a friend. Once you have one, don’t let it go. It just might be lost forever.

Here’s a poem using a phrase from my notebook.

Speaking in Tongues
for Kristy

Once I heard the pure sound of prayer.
When a man’s voice could not hold
the exultation from spilling, like cream
soda erupting from a shaken bottle.

It was as ancient, as a holy wind
moving in primordial canyons,
over earth consecrated by God.
The sound was not of that place,

not of any people, could not be claimed.
Could not be corrupted by man.
It was a mystery to me like looking into
a well in the middle of a moonless night.

Until the day my first child was born.
Then I knew there were some joys
that could not be uttered by man,
without the language of angels.

Robert W. Kimsey