In Verse and Voice: Choral reflections on the Poetry of Waukesha County
The following poems inspired today's choral selections. These poems are from local poets, through the AllWriters' Workshop in Waukesha, WI. Click here to learn more about AllWriters' Workshop!
Featured Poems
Content
Even in winter the crows caw passionately
The baby’s skin’s still tender
The forests yet breathe life
January wind awakens courage never sought in summer
And the fading years gild memory’s treasures
To praise the air that fills my lungs
The languages of birds
The rapture of a friendship shared
The magic of music and words…
If gratitude for such as these induces me to speak
And touches someone else’s life to kinder reverie
Then who am I to doubt the fates my choices brought to be
Or find not joy in knowing this will be my legacy
…. Patty Schopp
READING YOURSELF TO SLEEP
Eyelids flutter over the blank verse
of sleep. You brush the crow’s wings
from your face. The book, perhaps a collection
of Chekhov’s short stories, spills
from your hands and tumbles into the dark
as through still water, sinking
under the weight of words. You follow,
flumed like a spent swimmer,
happy for the long, quiet slide
into the book’s depths
and down into the dark’s feathery river.
The full moon, like the Pequod’s coin
weights your eyelids. Regret streams away
through the countless estuaries
of sentences until you finally let go.
Go ahead. The page numbers
will mark the way. The chapters
will toll the fathoms.
The Magic of a Box
At five, an empty box becomes my fort,
spy holes, private doors and pass codes
just right for top-secret sibling conclaves.
Stomped flat, our fort becomes a toboggan.
Exhilarating slides down snowy backyard slopes
precede one ill-advised tumble, down basement stairs.
My son fashions a fanciful leprechaun hotel.
St. Paddy’s Day visitors watch LEGO TVs from tissue box beds,
leaving coins of gold in payment for (and proof of) their stay.
Adding makeshift dials, buttons and DeLorean doors,
he travels through time to daring adventures
with dinosaurs, dragons and buried pirate treasure.
My granddaughter constructs a cardboard castle for princess dolls.
Ariel and Jasmine, Belle and Elsa, Mulan and Moana
all join in the intricate plot of her future feature film.
“Let’s make a fort, Grandma,” she says,
tossing her blanket over the box.
She invites me in, but I fit only halfway.
And yet…
Snuggled together among princesses, pillows and fleece,
I’m five once more.
• This poem was published in the collection, Growing Up, Lifespan Vol. 2 (Pure Slush Books, 2021)
MOON SERIES
COPPER MOON
copper moon tonight
penny among silver stars
treasure in the sky
ORANGE MOON
Orange moon, shine down,
blind the chaos we live in
with soft moonlit peace.
HARVEST MOON
The moon at half mast
Glows silver dreams and gold truths
As sighs twirl the earth
BLACK SKY
On a moonless night
the sky wears black in mourning
the stars shimmer tears
PREDAWN DREAMING
daydreaming when the day is still dark
ephemeral ethereal unrefined undefined
moonlit hope
starlit peace
Civil Engineers
I believe in civil engineers
Like children believe in Santa Claus,
Implicitly and unconditionally.
They pore over maps and graphs,
Stabbing fingers, pens, computer mice.
Planning, planning, planning.
Arcing out arms in expansive gestures,
They swoop the lines of roads and ramps,
Almost visible in the air, like the afterglow
Of flashlights or sparklers.
The lines and arcs and plans
Ooze from their minds, taking form on land,
One piece at a time,
Until high-rise freeways,
Impossibly tangled in two dimensions,
Join in midair in a three-dimensional, convoluted dance.
They chart and sketch and model,
Until canyon highways,
Stacked and suspended like serpentine ribbons
Over brash and boiling rivers,
Attach themselves, precarious shelves,
To rocky walls, fusing to prehistoric geology,
Enticing us to venture over thin air.
These dreamers take us through, over and around,
Holding us on tenuous cables or over unseen rebar,
Smoothing with sinuous curves of beckoning asphalt,
Leading us into tomorrow today.