Poetry Commons

Note: I'm traveling by cruise ship down the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland. Below is a little love poem. We were docked opposite a very large tree last night in Rudesheim.  While others walked, I went out after dinner and sat and circumabulated it and looked at rocks on the surrounding ground...and that was my evening tour.  I wrote the tree a poem:

O Black Poplar

I want to be with you,

not to walk to stores

or eateries or to talk more.

I sit in your lap, roots beneath,

immense sky-branches above,

and breathe with your leaves

and the doves I can't see

and some little bird that darts

with sweet piercing tweets,

and fondle rocks, some quartzite, 

some black and waterworn.

I walk around you, wishing

everyone well, and you

O Black Poplar

O Black Poplar

--here since 1890 

says the little sign, alongside

the northering Rhine--

receive my love, my touch

to your lustrous leaves;

my breath-moments in a life

of lesser age than thine.

Station of, terminal of,

vast many-branched antenna

of age and grace,

blessed be, old friend.

  *

So I pass THROUGH these ancient areas, so often war-torn for so long due to the territorial madness of men...reverencing.

Love to All,

Geoff Oelsner