Selected Poetry Book I: Themes and Variations - Softcover

Shapshak, Ph.D Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1468542095 ISBN 13: 9781468542097

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2012

Synopsis

SELECTED POETRY, Book I, THEMES AND VARIATIONS is a book of poetry by Paul Shapshak, PhD. There are also 10 photographs and a cover photograph of paintings and sculptures by the poet’s father, Sir Rene Shapshak. Several of the photographs were taken by one of the poet’s sons, Dag Shapshak, MD. (For additional information, see the poet-author description from the back cover.) This book divides into eight sections, Pastoral, Mythology, Cosmology, Theology, History, Social, Economics, and the Arts. Poetic forms that appear in the book include Sonnets, Cantos, Epigrammes, and Haikus. There are themes and variations on the themes in the book. A point is never completed, but builds and stretches examining time shifts, time drifts, and geographical climes, explored with surprises, and some balls hit out the ballpark. Some are paintings done at the beach by cliffs or in fields by streams, every hour on the hour that vary in chiaroscuro, color, and overtones. The poet enjoys and hopes that you will as well.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Selected Poetry Book I

Themes and VariationsBy Paul Shapshak

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Paul Shapshak, PhD.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4209-7

Chapter One

       HEARTH PROTECTOR


    Hearth protector principled, harvest kind
    Heath embers glowing last evening tides
    Kindnesses on air-laden breezes, branched
    Bower, roses at summer riverbanks.
    Day's flower now peeking through sunrise shy
    Blooming throughout the green summer day's glow
    Arms outstretched to anticipate the sigh
    Unfurling gleaming spring placid pools flow.
    Expecting, changing, and gathering storm
    Time protects against shifted dimension
    Lake, moon, erstwhile blush, reflect ocean calm
    Stars awakened, ponder lost horizon.
    Slender feet push ahead anticipate
    Slumber softly wintry dreamed snow carpet.


         SUNSET

    Hazed air smote ash tree
    Swayed estuary swollen
    Falling tide away


         MOUNTAIN

    Vista perspective
    Invisible walled cities
    Moated dimension


         MOUNTAIN AIR

    Air breathe told story
    Viewed emblems profiled above
    Chilled crisp snowy gaze


        MICCHU PICCHU

    Rock present sky-domed
    Cascades future ocean-sloped
    Paths passed-by stone-heaped


        WINTER SCENE

    Frozen island ice
    Geysers steamed flying stones spewed
    Darkening streams culled


         SPRING

    Congressed hidden blooms
    Confiding Spring leaves beneath
    Winter's snow eider


          DAWN

    Ocean by dawn's rise
    Each season wakes not alone
    We, never parted


    DAWN'S SECRET CLOUDS

    Dawn's secret clouds, awning surreptitious
    Special messengers and invisible
    Before ibis, sparrow, hawk, egret, tides
    Amulets, sandy, ebbing, and playful.
    Examine today's plays, with internet
    Cereal, yogurt, berries, coffee, milk
    Before dolphin's water-clicks, an egret
    On heels, stalks everglades frogs, silt, and silk.
    Palms sea-breezes stalking iguana saw
    Coastal crawfish oasis, time drifting
    Outgoing tide, rain, frogs, natural law,
    Riverbank, heron, leaves and grass swelling
    Warm, silent, awakened startled heron
    Glass flashes, glares into the rising sun.


    MORNING HAIKU

    For Madeleine, Sophia, Annika, and Evelyn

    Cranes awake, daybreak
    Storks preen white wings, Egrets blue
    Eagles widened gaze


    MID-DAY HAIKU

    Verse shadows mid-day
    Invisible divide crossed
    Afternoon disperses


    AFTERNOON HAIKU

    Sloped meadows larks skim
    In fragrance humming birds stay
    Soar starlings, kestrels


    TODAY

    Sunbeams softly broke
    Awakened light clouds rain pooled
    Beckon us look down


    RESTING

    Shaded grove branches
    Merging bringing down shelter
    Here doorway seasons


    PAST FIELDS

    Past fields oxen ploughed
    Ducks rising splintered silence
    Swans' sphinx phoenix sways


    EPIGRAMME 39

    Working the garden, debris debrided
    Busy bees, no sloth
    Busy beavers, no loss
    Busy frogs, no fight
    Unweary mowers, day earned
    Growers, day gained
    Light, bright
    Earning their daily sight
    Planting sods to spring
    Forth fully on the half-shell
    Radiant all is right.

    And on the one hand
    Ye seek
    And by the hand of the unseen
    Unknown
    Unthought
    Universe of tranquility
    Universal truth
    Conquests
    Bravado
    Bravura
    Hardened wooden fences

    Now resting, overworked
    Practising practiced plan
    Catcher in the rye
    Prussian nights
    Unbeknownst
    Clinging like ivy-coated walls


        CANTO LXVIII

    Midsummer's day,
    A day
    Another day
    Tomorrow, still another
    Remembered as it were, a gardened tree.

    A reed representationally
    Precision, gestured peace
    Faithful flock, another field, other folk, delusional
    Demi-notes as quiet ash and elms resurface for 100
    Years of solace, too. Seldom, do such questions reach
    The golden ladder
    Stairs, stars, slowed.


          CANTO XV

         Wall Flowers

    Evening circle
    Gyres widening, libraries
    Stretching gerunds, books of changes
    Collapsed mounds, ants, awry.

    Hidden in the gravel, willow brooks
    Sound bytes, murmuring near meadows
    The meadowlark, vistas expanding
    Sky-wing, aloft
    Stars to be seen.
    Solar mortality
    Beckons interstellar modes
    Vibrations on a string
    Which universe to choose.


         EPIGRAMME 43

    Singularities commence
    Bundles, sheaves, tangents
    Bend like crows on summer hills
    Winds press paved
    Meadows.


         EPIGRAMME 45

    All's well under the summer's sun
    Darkened now and then by clouds
    Bringing in the rains
    A little darkening to contrast the bright edges
    Glowing sunsets, prefaces to tomorrow mauve
    skies


        EPIGRAMME 44

          OUR GARDEN

    The lawn's verdure spreads
    From corner to corner
    The squirrels jump
    Among the branches and flee tree to tree
    The wrens are alighting
    Ground, trees, groups momentarily visible
    The hummingbirds dart
    Among the pines then hover at the jasmines
    The doves parade
    Cooing as they advance on foot
    Dragonflies following their footsteps by air
    And twilight frogs tell us about it.


         EPIGRAMME 21

    Reclining violets
    Starlight starbright
    Streak, struck
    At dawn
    Alerting day
    Moment
    To moment
    Together fused
    Sequential
    Posed
    Spatial time zones
    Accorded in sleepless climbs.


    EPIGRAMME 24

    Solitude
    Wing-tipped
    Time.
    Ducks flying in
    From wintered warmth
    Rushing streams
    Bluish lakes
    Lagoons
    Inland seas
    Under shining suns
    Stand
    Waiting for
    Today for you
    Follow
    Sounds, hymns
    Signs, springs.


        EPIGRAMME 23

    They waited at the foot of the stairs
    Time by-passed
    Wait unanswered
    Questions running out of time.

    Today in purgatory
    Another day of sunshine and snow
    Last year's snows gone-by
    Seething
    Awakened by universal thoughts
    And parochial tales.

    Among woods and forests
    Animals and plants
    A Deccan plateau
    Jungles passed
    Cities of thought reverie
    Dream years' days.


         EPIGRAMME 29

    On this day, bells sounding lightly
    Across horizons of forgotten dreams
    Move forward greeting
    Dawn
    Comes a day when awakened we see
    Beware the serpent's gaze
    Glimmers
    Repentant penitent.

    Knowing we read our books
    Mind our puzzles and prayers
    Upon the field of valor and enlightenment
    And charmed deer come and go
    Bliss
    Mindful and alert.


         EPIGRAMME 28

    Early morning gnats
    Swirling
    Circles midst pines and spruce
    Spirals twixt sunbeams
    Upwards gleaning their inaudible universe
    After sky glow calms
    Before cloudy skies
    To most, just trifles on the way to day's goals.

    Later as the morning heat engulfs
    Less closed and humid than a Floridian sunlit day
    Surprised at birds skirting the woods
    Sparrows, robins, crows
    Quieter and faster.
    Here, the gentle deer, a doe
    From the verdant glen
    Smiling
    Peers amidst shrubs
    Meanders among the pines and spruce
    Just to the high grass edge
    Knowing we here peer there
    She knows it is a safe day today
    Mother also.


         EPIGRAMME 26

    Forest shadows, shades of green,
    Branches, cones, and blackbirds
    Camouflaged. Unmoved against peering sunlit
    Treetops in early stillness
    By unnamed flowers strewn, whites and reds
    On forward bushes, foregrounds of tempered
    Views. Robins, blue jays, and cardinals
    Rapid wings and faster flights than in ever more
    tranquil woods.

    Pine forests, cleansed breath
    Fortified denizens, invisible yet as summer
    encroaches
    On spring's good fortune. Buds gone by
    Blooms subsumed by pods
    Burgeoning daily.

    This is not time for caroling, calling for margins
    Flooring sprouts tasseled grasses
    Replacing straws visible all winter
    When in abeyance all seemed at a standstill.


         EPIGRAMME 8

    Daylight touches the morning Egrets
    Perched at water's edge, overlooking
    Wintry dawn, though daily we roadsides pass.
    They, examining water's edge, gaze
    Catching sustenance till Spring once again
    Aloft spreads wings and Summer's ivy crowns.

    Woven oak and holly branches, beguiled
    In once frosty glens, shadowed Ibises rooted
    On their calm watery surfaces, seldom
    Wresting their glass reflections
    Until sunlit angles from
    Ages past and future spent.


       CRANES AND IBISES

    They land at dawn, traverse placid water
    Outskirts, mirrored light, by mid-day vanished.
    Eye, stilled lake edges, pond shallows sought here
    Glance poised, motionless, reflection banished.
    Evenings follow sidereal clock
    Prior days' invocation to more light
    At sunset, looming shadows before dark
    Hope soon sewn, reverie nights' glowing bright.
    Spring turned to summer's cicadas and frogs
    Turned, just looking, more lotuses in lieu
    Rains cascade they perch on branches and logs
    Forest canopy dwellers' vestal view.


        SURFACE INDEXES

    Catch surfaces cadences, summer airs
    Indexes of songs, distant tunes, turning
    Clarity, emboldened eyes, summer eves
    Raven charity, thrush and owl flying
    Methods of nature, visible blankets,
    Sticks brought composing in the songfest glen
    Waves, water, branches, leaves sensible quests
    Streaming waters, washing, tumbling children
    Woven panoplies, another question
    Propagated for time and space. The prod
    Enough now for an unwanted sensation
    Going to five or eleven space rod.
    Data streams fly by daily yours and mine
    Questions, answers, concepts, river and pine.
    Flows change catapulting evening talk
    What question, this answer tomorrow's walk.


        TIME'S SEASONS

    Autumn's afternoon crystalled vision glass
    Harbinger ice, frozen winds' prescient blasts
    Still color clouding sight bedecked shades haze
    Pools stilled, reflecting streams, flow quiet crafts.
    Winter's evening shadow, moonlit silver
    Bridged snow envelopes sounds gathered softly
    Blazing tripods, heat, hearths, open quiver
    Breath, fire, cheery cheeks child-like sight quickly.
    Spring's day suspended by thoughts of past cold
    Bearing shy blossoms where cherry orchards
    Seasons frozen past, quills, papers, recalled
    Summer's coming morning strewn river reeds.
    Gleaming warmth becoming steps, time, windows
    Daybreak beams, incoming tides, woods, meadows.


        A SUMMER'S DAY

    Summer's days fall complete from heaven, light
    Beckoned startled glimpse at the flights of birds
    Make entrance after Spring's questions and night
    Vision, thoughts, dreams anticipate for us.
    From Winter's day's rains and snows may relax
    Summer's silhouettes from darkness growing
    Spring's past whisperings of warming winds vex
    No more these breezes plough, blossoms seeking.
    Marsh edges, trees, brambles, alligator
    Sounds, frogs, and birds chatter always aside
    Conspicuous Darwinian raptor
    Forms of shimmering light, flashes skyward.
    In-between trees, shadows, busy beset
    Peck fill mindful crayfish they waters test.


          STAR

    Catch a falling star, a thought through treetops
    Visage peering across beams vanishing
    Sleepily get up, greet the morning wisps
    Catch last glimpses of dreams disappearing.
    Day's rival casts promise another turn
    Walk the lake, skip pebbles at cloudy calm
    Windows and divides, tides' concentration
    Limitless music requires metronome.
    Cool mist, waters' sounds, stilled echoes confide
    Far from currents, shadows encompass breadth
    Far from storms sprays times and tides shoulders
    turned
    Sandy grasses, daisies, and flower breath.
    Immutably the task brings each dawn, dusk
    Turning grindstone, crushing wheat, chaff alike.


          FABLES

    Each beaten plough another universe unveils
    Swords awkwardly brought to light, shorn, tempered
    Shining, salient, silent star travails
    Another shore, sailing ships recovered.
    Watch inner light flicker, waxing, glimmer
    Phrases outweighed, for valued rights girthing
    The lighthouse, the rocks, resuming temper
    Shores, deserts alike, over glassed coating.
    Crossed fables, sights, sounds, and secluded thoughts
    Focused factors, orbs and scepters, reap.
    Bridged lives across further-mapped firmaments
    Riding shipped winds, cooled more at rest than sleep.
    For runners run to love and marriage vows
    Flowers, stars, boughs on this eternal, grows.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Selected Poetry Book Iby Paul Shapshak Copyright © 2012 by Paul Shapshak, PhD.. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1468542095
• ISBN 13: 9781468542097
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 228