Markings 210

Dear friends, family, colleagues and poetry lovers:

Hello everyone,

In April this year my new and 12th collection of poems SCANNING THE SOUL – Finding the Poetry in Everyday Life will be published.

The poetry is accessible, positive and meditative. I have attached three samples of the poetry you can expect. Each poem is also supported with an original photograph or painting.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will be used for the construction of wells to provide clean water for Cambodian villages. In addition, a new project is underway to send six Cambodian village girls to school.

https://www.welldirected.org

The book will retail for $30. You can order a copy from me for $25 (2 for $40) post-free.

I know you will enjoy the work and perhaps consider it as a special and different gift for someone.

Love and best wishes

Jeff

This morning

the sun

like soft yellow, warm

delicious butter

has covered

everything

the air is fully laden

with golden light

and the cologne spray

of star jasmine

the world is green deep

ripe and sweet

I pluck the moment

and bite the day to its core.

It is recorded that Michelangelo could see

a new sculpture in a raw piece of marble.

This morning watering I brushed the rosemary hedge

all day savoured its woody pine lemon on my hands

found a small blessing in the blackbird’s song

hidden notes from the dark thorny safety

of bright raspberry-ice of rampant bougainvillea

later with coffee, I picked my father’s legacy

of two ripe white Syrian figs

and needed no sugar in my cup

and all I know this afternoon

is that this scent of new mown grass

connects memory in a long languid

chain of ancient days

that compose all of my senses

into an absolutely ordinary poem.

Solstice

I lit the fire early in a grate of ice

fruit wood and wrist-thick old briar

catching quickly and climbing in coils

spreading along the ceiling of the low-roofed sky

I pulled an old garden chair to its rough hearth

to the spit and hiss of rose oil

and the sweet fume of sawn apricot and peach

sunk in a warm corner of the garden framed with cold

Inertia was everything, moving only for books and coffee

my breath a small bellows in the aching air

late afternoon the grass still rimed with white

a gathering shortness drew up the flight of hours

to the dark squat chimney of the evening and the coals

of morning, a ramble of rose hips and bright orange fruit.

To order: jeffpoet@gmail.com