All Poems
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Where The Creek Used To Run
© Ivan Donn Carswell
In ash-fine silt that spread like sand
after the flood and before the wild weeds
claimed the old stream bed;
before thistle phalanxes sprang
A Dish Of Peaches In Russia
© Wallace Stevens
With my whole body I taste these peaches,
I touch them and smell them. Who speaks?
When We Were Young
© Ivan Donn Carswell
As a child I played in the same frosty fields
barefoot as my no lesser loved classmates,
whom we challenged to show courage in the numbing cold,
then together we held our chilled fingers over the roaring stove
that warmed our prefabricated, asbestos-sided classroom.
Winter Uplands
© Archibald Lampman
The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
I sit in the great silence as one bound;
When I Close My Eyes
© Ivan Donn Carswell
When I close my eyes I cannot reconstruct your face
but the three-dimensional solidity or you
bursts through the tissues of my skin,
transmogrified by a tactile binary fusion.
Dermott Donn MacMorna
© Padraic Colum
ONE day you'll come to my husband's door,
Dermoit Donn MacMorna,
One day you'll come to Hugh's dark door,
And the pain at my heart will be no more,
Dermott Donn MacMorna!
What does it take?
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Is the current rate of global warming
a serious and cogent warning?
Do we need to think about the fact
that higher tides will drown Pacific island states
The Quidditie
© George Herbert
My God, a verse is not a crown;
No point of honor, or gay suit;
No hawk, or banquet, or renown,
Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute:
What a weekend
© Ivan Donn Carswell
What a weekend, it certainly defied all the pundits trends,
the World Game French were trashed by Versace and petulance,
the Wallabies by a graphic haka, while Wimbledon saw the Amazons
revenge and Switzerlands answer was Roger Federer in eminence.
Last Load
© Ted Hughes
Baled hay out in a field
Five miles from home. Barometer falling.
A muffler of still cloud padding the stillness.
The day after day of blue scorch up to yesterday,
The heavens of dazzling iron, that seemed unalterable,
Hard now to remember.
We, The Living
© Ivan Donn Carswell
There were moments when we rose above despair
borne by strength of spirit in your name,
but tragedy remained in darkened shadow's
gloom beneath your widow's eyes.
The Workman's Dream
© Edgar Albert Guest
To-day it's dirt and dust and steam,
To-morrow it will be the same,
We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We reflect this day on the essence of intimacy,
from its origins in the spring-tide of youth
to an afterward secured in distant mist
in awe for the reason and to what end it endures.
Ghazal 5
© Daagh Dehlvi
hansa hansa k shab-e-vasl ashk-bar kiya
tasalliyan mujhe de-de k beqarar kiya
Water Babes
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We were water babes, born in the arms of a sparkling brook
that patiently took us into its heart. At the very start we
were never far from its shingly banks, playing amid ranks
of serried wildflowers. When one of us all but drowned
The Three Singers To Young Blood
© George Meredith
Carols nature, counsel men.
Different notes as rook from wren
Hear we when our steps begin,
And the choice is cast within,
Where a robber raven's tale
Urges passion's nightingale.
Uncommon common sense
© Ivan Donn Carswell
The other day I listened to a man on the radio
who made uncommon common sense, specially since
it was an interview on ABCs noon talk-back show.
He was a Professor, of what I hadnt heard,
Twenty Four Hour Embrace
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Awakening
in the twenty four hour embrace of a few moments sleep,
where half a lifetime eludes dreams;
and feeling you were cheated
by too much gin and lack of sleep
in these unconsummated fumblings.
To The Rock That Will Be A Cornerstone Of The House
© Robinson Jeffers
Old garden of grayish and ochre lichen,
How long a rime since the brown people who have vanished from
Travelling on the thumb
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Travelling on the thumb, it wasnt hard to do, you took
the rides that you could get with no regrets let shrinkage
in the mileage to your goal provide your measures of success,
strode the grassy verges thumb erect and cursed the surly
