Poetry Corner With Ron Koertge

PHOTO: Bill Glazier | SouthPasadenan.com News | Poet Laureate Ron Koertge read a poem about the gigantic Moreton Bay Fig.

Here’s a poem about making the best of the current state of affairs – Ron

 

I Like to Stay Home

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I like to walk out front and look at the Mexican

sage or to the west side of the house where

my neighbor Jim has put in some new leaded

glass decorated with roses.

 

Around back is a clothesline,  usually hung with

laundry.  It’s very pleasant to sit on the steps

with one of the cats and watch the breeze move

a blouse hung upside down like an acrobat.

 

My friends go to Bangkok and the Black Forest,

but I settle for house and yard, a dozen

amaryllis, garbage cans with numbers on them,

a possum to summon me back to this world.

 

At two a.m. I get up and go outside in my white

pajamas.  Above is the butter-colored moon,

underfoot crushed mint.  Over there is the possum

so I tell him to shoo, go home.

 

I clap my hands delicately like a lady at court

applauding the harpsichord, and follow his tail

around the corner.  Jim has left a light on

and there are those roses, the ones that never

get to drop their petals on a blue runner like

they do at my house.

 

PHOTO: Steven Lawrence | SouthPasadenan.com | Author Ron Koertge

Ron Koertge is the current poet laureate of South Pasadena.  Contact him at this address:   ronkoepoet@gmail.com