Five previous unpublished poems of mine were featured on Susi Bocks’ The Short of It. Check them out!
Roses
I only pretend to smell the roses
when I kiss their petals with lips
chapped by twenty years of thirst.
I never expected to live this long
without you.
For the Bird who Smashed into my Window
All that remained airborne
was a solitary feather
on its final flight
Not understanding death
drifting down
Galileo
Poets have been howling at the moon
since before we invented language
Our ancestors gazed at the stars
noticed five among thousands
that wandered the skies like chariots
Astrologers and scientists tracked
Jupiter as he marched along
regularly retracing his steps
at his most glorious
No one knew of his four escorts
each brighter than the little dipper
until Galileo pointed his telescope
up — and revealed what had been hidden
by the Jovian glare
And I mourn for the eons of reflected sunlight
wasted on our puny human eyes
View original post 370 more words
Bartholomew Barker, Poet 
Congratulations Bartholomew! Five well deserved publication poems!
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Thank you, CB!
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Fabulous stuff, Bart. They are yours right? I Write Her drew me in immediately. The Roses poem is exquisite in its brevity and heartbreak, or longing, or both.
I need to read and reread. Carl Sagan may take umbrage at the “thousands” of stars. He would insist on billions and billions, but he was not a poet.
Thanks for the link, M
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Those five are mine but Susi’s blog is well worth subscribing to.
To defend my use of “thousands” in the Galileo poem, we can only see thousands with our puny humans eyes. It wasn’t until we enhanced our vision with telescopes that we learned the true extend of the universe.
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I’m really happy you submitted again this year, Bart! Your pieces are wonderful! Thank you! <3
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No, thank you for The Short of It!
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<3
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Lovely Bartholomew and five! Way awesome! 😊
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Thank you, Gypsie!
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Congratulations well deserved. Great work. As happens with many of of your poems, I had to do some googling, (for Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) I thought they were muses but they are moons. Almost the same thing eh? :) Also, named for lovers of Zeus so there is a mythology connection.
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Thanks! Fortunately, the old astronomers tended to name moons after mythological characters so there can be an extra layer in poems about them.
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Congratulations! I enjoyed each and every poem, but the last one hit me hardest. It speaks to me of complete freedom—but with a price.
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Thanks! That last poem, Liberation, is a pretty old one that I pulled back out of the pile to work on a couple of years ago.
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Always my pleasure. 💕🙂
I’ve done the same. For a while now, every Thursday, I post an older, reworked (sometimes a little, sometimes a lot) poem of mine. It’s interesting looking back, and often, finding improvements.
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The trouble is, Bart – you’re so prolific – I have trouble keeping up with what you do!
Aye – the sea just doesn’t give a damn. Why should it?
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I only seem prolific because I’ve been at this for so long and you just recently found me.
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Wonderful poems! Congratulations!
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Thank you, Dawn!
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