Grammatical Engagement

A quotable nose;
parenthetical hair;
elliptic breath
in the transitive air.

I love you beyond
the comparative degree.
We're a syntactic bond —
your voice encloses me.

And I love you above
every mood and tense,
and propose we become
a compound sentence.


© 1997, 2007 by Geoff M. Pope
Published in Chronicles Magazine and Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range

Photo by Geostem of Jillyrose

Morning after Saints Win Super Bowl

I'm hung over
with a halo...

© 2010 Geoff M. Pope

"New Orleans erupts in celebrations..."

The White Stone

And I will give to each one a white stone,
and on the stone will be engraved a new name
that no one knows except the one who receives it.
—Revelation 2:17b

Perhaps after Jesus
gives each of us
a white stone,
we'll know
to keep it next to bone —
with the singing rib?
in the crown's crib?

I like to lie down
in the shower...in the steam;
occasionally I take
a white stone and press it
in the pond of my sternum
or the puddle bottom of my chest;

and I guess about Heaven's Alpha-
bet, ponder the possibility
of being published in Paradise.


© 1999 by Geoff M. Pope
Published in Radix Magazine

"White Stone in Sand"

Dad in My Face

I saw him
for the first time
today.
I’ve been hearing him
out of my mouth
for decades,
feeling him in my steps
for years.

But not until today
did I see him
in my face.

I nearly walked into the mirror.
I almost turned away. I never
would have thought I’d see that —
him — much less say, “He looks
pretty good.”


© 2007, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

girl's face
ian moore: unthinkable thinking

Only, Only Let Her Speak

When Justin heard his wife confess,
“My life is nothing but a mess!” —
he kept his mouth shut, didn’t interrupt;
for he was learning that at least part of
the solution would eventually peek
if he would only, only let her speak.


© 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

Artist: Nicole K. Docimo: blue bicicletta / "Listen"

Next Body?

Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die,
but they will be raised to live forever. They are buried as
natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual
bodies. —1 Corinthians 15:42, 44 (NLT)

Imagine yourself running up mountains
that make the Alps look like anthills.
And what would it feel like to never
need to sleep, never catch a cold or
get a migraine, or undergo the slight-
est ills?

© 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

Published in The Word in Question: Verse Reflections on Peculiar Scriptures from the Bible

Photographer: [Pastor Pancho Juarez' daughter's name forthcoming]

Mother with a Moonbow

Outside the DuPont lodge,
luminous dogwoods flower
on the mountaintop after
midnight.

Mother writes above the Cumberland River —
moonbow near the falls, halo over her hand.

She mails moonlight
in envelopes of mist.

© 2005, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

Note: Cumberland Falls in Kentucky is the only place
in the Western Hemisphere that continually has a
moonbow show. —from a postcard

Photographer: Bryce Fields: Flickr / Harvest Moonbow #3

Prayer

                                                            after George Herbert

Prayer — the Church’s compass, preface to bliss,
Body battery, heaven’s zeal-stamped mail,
Silo, well, invisible kiss,
Worship’s gentle sibling, the heart’s mended sail;

Shouts dispelling capital doubts, simply
Something disarming for the world to see;

Fear’s foe, flesh subverter, verses in flight,
As in an elevator, homeroom,
Faith’s roommate, hope’s date, saint’s dynamite,
Disease’s undoing, Satan’s scare, foreshadowed doom;

Surprise unseen, an eagle’s sleep,
Tongue’s treasure scattered, the radiant saved sealed,
Love in fact, a little child’s peep,
The burden and the will of the Lord revealed;

Vision’s viceroy, the best vice-versa,
A wake-up call; education for all.

© 1994, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

The Blood Jet

                                                                  The blood jet is poetry,
                                                                  There is no stopping it.
                                                                   —Sylvia Plath

Planes of bone can be handled.
Helicopters of emotion — controlled.
But when the blood jet revs up
and takes off, there is no stopping it.

From craft carriers in the body’s stream
the jet ascends to top speed and reaches
a cruising altitude of free or metered feet.
The eye becomes a slanted sky, the pen

a fuselage.


© 2000, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope
Forthcoming in Many Trails to the Summit: An Anthology of Pacific Northwest Poets (Rose Alley Press)

My Coffee Mug

Many mornings I’ve held
this big white porcelain mug —
GOOD MORNING
circling the outside.

Before I moved to Seattle
I rarely drank coffee, but now
(most days well before dawn)
I sip Millstone’s Foglifter
Medium Roast or Hazelnut
Cream blend, with soy milk
and a pinch of Stevia.

The mug of energizing java
rests on a coaster
with these words:
A Morning
Without Coffee
Is Like
Sleep
In the reflection from a halogen light
on the surface with tiny milky bubbles
appears a little island the shape of Cozumel
near the mouth of a meandering Mississippi River.

Taken, I lift my coffee mug to the Creator
of caffeine before the island and the river
disappear down the ravine of my throat.


© 2009, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope

Image by Robert Simmon for NASA—Earth Observatory

Shutters

                               after visiting Hemingway House in Key West;
                               for Michael Newton

There I was, in his house,
twenty years after you gave me
a copy of To Have and Have Not.

The sweaty tour guide, near a six-toed cat,
appeared to enjoy his lines alongside photos
and paintings crowded on the walls. “Papa,”

my dad and I were told, “had the bed made with
a headboard from the gate of a Spanish monastery.”
Quietly, I walked across the hall, to stand before

the books.

But not until I stepped out onto the veranda
did I feel his legendary presence. I shivered
in the September heat when I saw that green

veranda, especially the shutters, shaded
from Florida sunlight — those secure
and perfectly silent shutters.


© 2009, 2010 by Geoff M. Pope
Forthcoming in Many Trails to the Summit: An Anthology of Pacific Northwest Poets (Rose Alley Press)

Photo by Geoff M. Pope: The Green Veranda
Ernest Hemingway House

my wife saved my life (three haiku)

my wife saved my life
not once but twice. This Christmas
alto saxophones...

my wife saved my life
once, and again. Christmas Day
cashmere and chenille...

my wife ended her life
more than two times. Christmas Night
Australian rummy!

GeoJilly at Jay Berry’s