R. S. Stewart


LOCAL RIFFRAFF 

There is usually a clue around the corner 
or nearer, saving going a distance
if travel is troublesome, brought on by 
not knowing how much to pack for how long a duration.
Enthusiasm plays a larger part than at first surmised.
Cancellation, though, is out of the question.
Details must be confronted head-on, more so
if they’re hidden locally than far from home
where the lay of the land and direction are often
not the same as assumed. Supplies require special attention,
as does food, considering the body and all of its 
accruements. Daily grind comes into play as well, 
furniture of the mind as it’s called in some circles.
Nothing more need be named if you’re getting the picture,
bleak as you want it, or more pastoral in dreamy
diversions. Yet the clue remains a snag of some
proportion until it’s discovered. Is it, like most spurns
of the intellect, imperative to pursue and possess--
or a figment that can be tossed off, suppressed 
with enough skill in the skull, smoothed out
and soothing to the overall? Regardless, riffraff has
its own local spin-offs, often superior to the original.
It’s best to tend to their needs and nags
as soon as spotted. Otherwise, what? The nay-sayers
are quick on the uptake, quicker at the corner
where riffraff may still be lurking. 



ESOTERIC DESIGNS

Inadvertently is how we were told
that certain esoteric designs
are ours for the grasping. This was
news to us, we who like the straight shot
of a less eager touch, a hesitant tendency 
to materialize as the seductive moon does on a foggy night.
We’re not out for all we can get, thus
misunderstood in most aesthetic circles
though we aim higher only after light scrutiny.
Blank stares are the too-frequent reactions, sprinkled
with winks from the more astute but anxious 
among us, ever curious if we will ever examine 
the esoteric designs hinted at achieving if only,
if only. The hinge there (and here, too) is like a rupture 
not beyond repair and within overreach. 



NO ATTENTION TO DETAIL

If a blank canvas is plush
with paint, so does a realistic, 
ubiquitous glob spread its nervy edge toward art.
Attention to it is one more need
to steer clear of all that detail
so dominant in the quickest look
out the window at dawn, 
noon’s evasive extension.
There is no reprieve
from the absorption it demands.
One solution is to heave
its heaviness off the primal path
of that flirtatious bend in reason
all artists acknowledge after exhausting
the paint’s possibilities. In their beds
they emulate the incautious way the glob
takes over, the initial brushes of it
surpassing what substitute scenery erases.

R. S. Stewart, a native and resident of western Oregon, has published poems in many journals in both the U. S. and Europe, most recently in The Dark Horse (Scotland), Tipton Poetry Journal, and The Wallace Stevens Journal.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page