HALLOWEEN NIGHT
It is Halloween night.
As goblins and hags
We go trick or treating
To fill our bags.
The night is chilly
But we don’t care.
We scare each other.
Tonight all is fair.
And when it is over –
It’s been a long night –
My room looks inviting:
What welcome sight.
The chest of drawers,
Night table and clock,
The coat stand with hat,
And father’s long frock.
The half-open window,
My warm, cozy bed.
I say my prayers
And lay down my head. Continue reading
FATHER
Father, where are you?
Long buried your strong body and blue eyes,
your fierce look and jarring ways,
But not your kind words, your smile and warm hug
Ever present in my love.
Yet my children still see my father’s fierce look in my eyes;
And my jarring ways are my father’s
And now also theirs.
May we forgive each other
And forgive ourselves.
May we remember only our love.
1-8-1984
WRITER’S BLOCK
The typewriter frantically clacks,
Turns out tickertape fit for confetti,
Then jars to a halt.
My cranium crammed full of nothings –
The last bird flew South –
Abandoned, an empty shell.
My heart freezes over:
A lake in which a golden nugget
Sunken in its depths
Turned into tarnished brass.
COLORS
Autumn in upstate New York:
Nature’s flamboyant last flair of a dying flame!
I’m sitting up front next to the driver
Soaking up leafgreens
Ochre-yellows, bright oranges and reds
More varied in hue than printer’s colors.
Welcome assault on the senses.
Yet I remember the dream of two weeks ago:
Raw polished purple on a painter’s palette,
Tufts of blues and reds intermingled, yet separate,
Thick, a dense substance, varnished by my mind
Never yet seen in nature:
A reminder that color lives in my dreams
And red in my veins.
WHAT’S IN A WORD?
A whole wide world of sound sensations.
Picures speak in sounds of nations.
I never listened to the words
When I heard songs sung as a child,
And yet I could predict a rhyme.
Now ‘child’ is a word and ‘rhyme’ is another.
Though they don’t rhyme they soothe each other.
They both contain the vowel “I”.
There’s I and eye and Ei in German.
The last means egg.
My word, what sermon!
I understand that when you teach
You merit nothing if you preach.
Your literary value drops
And critics call your works mere flops.
But I maintain I’m my own reader.
If I am led I am the leader.
If I turn out to be a flop
I’ll spin around my floppy top
And spin my yarn around my world.
My word, all this is in a word?
1985
MY NANNY
I don’t know why
I can’t get by
Without reflecting on the world
And why I’m here.
It’s just uncanny.
I don’t know one,
I don’t know any
Who might know all.
Sometimes I wish that I was small.
Then I could ask ….
My nanny.
1987
ODIN’S TRAUM
Odin, wer bist Du?
Spiegelst Du Dich in meinem Antlitz ewiglich?
Lebensbaum, waechst Du aus Odins Traum?
Traum, Du Schoepfer der Wirklichkeit,
Sag, wohin geht es in Ewigkeit?
Ist der kurzeste Weg nicht auch sehr weit?
DAS GEDANKENKIND
Horch, wie der Wind die Hoeh’ erreicht,
Durch die tiefsten Schluchten streicht,
Wie er atmet aus und ein in Menschen, Blaettern, im Gestein.
Die Geistgestalt ist wie ein Kind, mal hier, mal da, immer geschwind.
Gedankenkind, kein Weg ist weit, denn alles geschieht zur gleichen Zeit.
So traeum, mein Kind. Was Du traeumst wird wahr.
Die ganze Welt ist wunderbar.
“Oh, moecht ich doch ein Bluemchen sein,
nein, springen wie das Kaetzlein klein.”
Im Streben ist Sterben, im Sterben streben.
Streben und sterben gehoeren zum Leben
Wie Ober- und Unterfaden zum Weben.
1985
DREAMLAND
Alone with my thoughts and ready to sleep
I welcome you, darkness, velvet and deep.
There are sights to behold so vivid and clear.
Hand me paper and pencil. I’ll draw them but fear
When I open my eyes they’ll be gone from my mind,
Gone on to dreamland for dreamers to find.
November 1984
Ute's Poetry and Musings 