Standing Upon The Sands
I cast my sinker
Deep into depths
Fishing for instructive humanity,
Fishing in a sea
Of sweat and abuse,
I spend my leisure hours,
Suffering,
As we all suffer together.
Never Reached
1
Seems in moments clearly sighted,
Far from damnable pride,
Seems I wished away my life
Wistful wishes without
a) result
b) because
I seem,
Now beneath the lens of sixty,
Less lent to fancies guide
Who fleetingly flew me
Where ill won’t usher,
Less today than yesterday,
Yesterday less than before.
Like the stunted tree,
The bonsai,
I reached out roots
To blind clay walls,
Aged and misty,
Aged beyond my wise,
Coarse beyond my hopes,
Steeps stretching past centuries
Aged and ochre
Too tall to see over or beyond.
Oh wonder killing wish of thunder
Rolling off a sleeve
While a lightning pen writes
In nights dumb darkness
Wonder,
Will inky storms
Soar me away
To future world’s gray praise?
2
Man I know can
c) become.
I know it happened before.
History need not lie!
Great men show their force of “will”
Then die (most)
Saturated with self satisfaction
Or least,
Feeling the wealth of their accomplishment
Some few, few believers
Offering wreaths at their altars.
So why not wish myself away
Into efforts beyond my reach?
Mighty efforts
Like the late great did seek.
Why not seek,
Each effort always more
Than that which came before
Seeking further reaches of the mind
Hoping walls enclosure not so coarse
It stifles my amour?
3
Oh but why,
I want to know,
Do efforts tumble down,
Back down to days before reach
Beneath me at a lesser steep
Leaving me wishing a way up
Or worse,
Wondering why,
Why reach,
Why climb at all
When faced with oh,
So steep a wall.
Richard Jay Shelton was born in 1946 on a navy base in Coronado, California, but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles. The six poems selected are part of three larger works titled “Carefully Chosen Words,” “Pathetic Poetics,” and “Apathetic Poetics.” His poetry has appeared in The Chaffin Journal, The Poet’s Haven, The Eclectic Muse, Pulse Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Down in the Dirt, The Homestead Review, and Willard & Maple.
