width=61 height=87> |
L. Ward Abel Featured Poet |
|
(bio current as of December 2005)
This Valley is Full of Water This valley is full of water and fence-lines. Sometimes along the fences trees will begin to grow, as no one can get to them under the wire. I feel like those trees: between, neither. Pulpwooders and landscape architects have descended here. They envision something more than the apparent, something with structure; but they are the fools. What can you say about someone without secrets in these fields? About someone who doesn’t care if everyone else knows all there is to know about him? I wish I were like that. In our local feed-store parking lot is a prisoner who nodded off inside the prison van. His dreams are more real than his life has become; he doesn’t want to wake. When the front door of my house opens a bird flies in; he sits upon the mantle for a while until he decides to go. Some would call it bad luck, but must everything have a meaning? Copyright © 2006 L. Ward Abel
Receiving Line At the funeral home in Ellaville I stood in line for a forty year old man never known to me, though I had known his parents. He died by violence in an unsolved crime. While queued, other faces were avoided, me never knowing what to say. I smelled liquor on someone’s breath, but couldn’t place the brand name. Copyright © 2006 L. Ward Abel
Arthur's Seat at Night On that windy hill I felt the city flash. Seas of the North held my palms, combed my hair. Yellow lights, castles, The Seat in rock blown; For a moment I was ancient, then I felt my young face. (Edinburgh, Scotland 1979) Copyright © 2006 L. Ward Abel
The Widening Cinnamon on my tongue. The east condenses; morning again and I have already fallen, fallen in an early frost, fallen on the edge of a parking lot where town turns to field. I’m white now, iced and stumbling with that taste in my mouth and visions of loss. Get me in a heated space, thaw me, close the gap that I fear is widening. Copyright © 2006 L. Ward Abel
Squall Broken pine on the breeze snapped from a force that carries night with it; shards cast county-wide as fragrant seed. And when day comes again, webs in the pasture like sails unfurl ankle-high in futile resistance to certain coming hell-to-pay. Copyright © 2006 L. Ward Abel
|
L. Ward Abel is a life long poet, composer of music and spoken-word performer.
He has written and recorded music for Abel & Rawls (now Abel, Rawls & Hayes),
as Max Able (his former alter-ego) and with spoken-word pioneers Scapeweavel.
His poems have been published widely in the U.S. and Europe, in print and on-line.
His chapbook, Peach Box and Verge, has been published by
