The winds rise up,
and the sky grows dark,
as, for an anxious moment, the sun
hides behind her brother moon,
fearful of her chasing wolf,
but another will swallow the moon
and make the stormy heavens bleed.
Copyright 2024
T. Allen Culpepper
Tag Archives: open form
What Would Benjamin Franklin Say?
Ben Franklin sat beside me at the airport restaurant,
unshorn and bespectacled, dressed in neutral tones
and sensible shoes for travel.
Playing with his phone, of course, while he nibbles
his tacos–the least expensive item on the menu–
and washes them down with a tall lager,
his one indulgence.
I wonder what regimen he’s following this week,
what notes he’s recording on his phone, whether
he has any proverbs for when early to bed and
early to rise makes us as likely as anyone else
to starve in poverty or succumb to loneliness
or get shot down in the street.
Not sure whether it’s discipline we need or diplomacy,
words of sage advice or just a kite in the thunderstorm.
I should ask him, but I don’t.
Copyright 2023
T. Allen Culpepper
Cottonwood Shower
Wispy puffs of cottonwood blossom hang
in the still air before the storm,
then take a little twirl before
they glide silently across my field of vision
toward their soft landing in the grass.
A small white moth, circling potted flowers,
nearly goes unnoticed, another post,
white-winged amid an ethereal host of others.
And then the springtime rain begins to fall,
gently at first, but gaining intensity,
until soon it brings down the fleet
with harder drops and distant thunder.
But almost as quickly as it started, the rain
tapers off, and grey skies do a glow-up,
with filtered light, then full-on sun.
A house-wren flights about the moth returns,
a breeze starts up and rustles leaves;
a wisp of cottonwood floats by.
Copyright 2023
T. Allen Culpepper
Tree, Rock, Water, Wind
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere,
a gnarly old post-oak braves the incessant wind
to take its lonesome stand, rising from the black rock,
the black rock, not the red rock, not the rusty granite
through which meager streams somehow force themselves to tunnel,
but the black rock, always the black rock,
the nutrient-serving black rock.
The tree leans into the wind but stands,
feeding on the rock;
the rock anchors itself to the earth,
resisting the wind,
nourishing the tree;
the water flows under the earth,
through the rock,
unseen;
time might as well have stopped,
but the wind,
the wind
never does.
Copyright 2023
T. Allen Culpepper
The Concrete Chicken
A painted concrete chicken
surrounded by daffodils
in a scruffy flowerbed.
Nothing depends on it.
Copyright 2023
T. Allen Culpepper
Solstice
At the exact moment of the Winter Solstice,
my plane is picking up speed on the runway,
headed west and an hour back in time,
on a long day for the shortest one,
and if no further delays occur, I should
be home before the coming storm, before Christmas,
but it doesn’t real seem like Christmas at all,
and lately Tulsa feels less and less like home–
almost thirty years now, off and on,
so much of my life, experiences good and bad,
but these days I’m finally missing The South,
longing for pine trees, crazy family, and gentler weather,
a change from the lonesome winds.
Copyright 2022
T. Allen Culpepper
Epitaph
Engraved on an obelisk
in the oldest part of the cemetery,
the epitaph “She was a Christian-hearted woman”
invites the question whether
it is meant as a commendation
for kindness and generosity
or perhaps an apology of sorts
for an exterior appearance seemingly
at odds with those interior virtues,
a woman who “meant well, bless her heart.”
Copyright 2022
T. Allen Culpepper
A Few More Meters
Drought-parched grass crunches
under my feet as the West Coast burns,
Europe melts, and the politicians
in Washington assault democracy
and the freedom of the human spirit.
Fear scorches me like the blazing sun,
and it’s hard to find enough hope left
to cling to, but the tides keep rising,
and every day the glaciers slide
a few meters closer to apocalypse.
Copyright 2022
T. Allen Culpepper
Five Friends on a Saturday Evening in Oslo
Five friends in the park, high school or recently graduated,
all good-looking, but not quite equally, all dressed
differently, but in outfits chosen carefully for a Saturday
night out, laughing, hugging, jostling one another,
posing for photos in various combinations–someone
has to take the picture, after all, and it looks like a couple
of them might be, or have been coupled, at least one
seems probably single, but clearly they all know each
other well, they all have with one another the intimacy
of relaxed familiarity, able to touch without worrying
what it means, and they’re drinking Isbjørn beer
from cans carried in a paper bag, walking around,
checking out the music festival in this park, the
outdoor dance party in the next one over,
but mainly just enjoying each other’s company
on a beautiful June evening that will seem nearly endless
since the sun won’t set until after 10, and true dark
will hardly come at all this time of year, and their
youth must now seem almost that eternal too, and
though it will someday fade, as youth does, I
hope their friendship will endure, just the way
it is right now, for at least a lifetime.
Copyright 2022
T. Allen Culpepper
The Stave Church from Gol
Stands now on Bøgdoy in Oslo, displaced in time and space,
a reconstruction, of course, but isn’t everything really?
Imagine a time when infant Christianity had come, but
the dragons had not yet gone into hiding, the magic
was frail, faltering, but not yet quite dead.
Outside, spires reach heavenward, but dragons
climb them. And then, through a portal like a
keyhole, one enters an early-medieval quiet
that must have seemed a welcoming sanctuary
not only from the old dragons and new demons,
but also from the uncertainty of change, a
comfortable snug of softly filtered light and warm
wood beautifully painted and carved,
but low-key, not ostentatious.
Imagine minds troubled by literal demons
seeking solace here–and though, in the
aftermath of science, it’s easy to mock
their fears, are we driven any less to distraction
by the continual parade of cat videos and
Tik-Tok dances, twisted memes and conspiracy
theories? And for just a moment…
Yes, only for a moment, to entertain the fantasy
of changing demons with them, going back
to a time when, an internal space where,
binaries are real but digital has no meaning.
But then I snap the image on my phone;
I’ll post it on social media.
Copyright 2022
T. Allen Culpepper
Poetry When It Comes 