3 Poems, With Thanks to Dimitri Reyes

I love following prompts for inspiration to write poems. A poet I follow, Dimitri Reyes, offers a prompt every Sunday on Patreon, and the virtual me recently attended one of his (highly recommended) Saturday workshops.

"Write a poem about a bird," Dimitri said one recent Sunday, which prompted a haiku about the keepsake pictured above. It serves as a memento of my late uncle, a priest. The cardinal is a bird of remembrance, a sign that those who have passed are with us in spirit.

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Haiku in My Living Room

Pray to my uncle,
Now a stained-glass cardinal.
Church, a bamboo cage.

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"Write about a favorite TV show," Dimitri suggested on another Sunday. So I flew back in time to write about a favorite episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," from the first "Star Trek" series, a guilty Thursday night pleasure for Dad and me when I was young.

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Tomorrow Is Yesterday

It’s a Thursday night in March 2024,
And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is a thousand miles away from me
In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,
And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Dad loves to pretend he’s Captain Kirk.
I love to pretend Captain Kirk is my Dad.

Suddenly, on the fluorescent screen before us,
Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,
Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.
We slingshot around the sun and land back in our TV room.

It’s a Thursday night in January 1967,
The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,
775 miles away from the storm.

He is still a thousand miles away
From the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there. I place a protective arm
That envelops my small body. I whisper in my ear.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,”
I say over and over again.

Soon, a tractor beam surrounds me.
Its light absorbs me.

My grasp on myself dissolves,
As credits begin to roll.

An otherworldly vessel -- this poem --
Takes me home, this image implanted in my brain:

Dad, like Captain Kirk, at the conn,
Exploring strange new worlds,

Changing my future forever.

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During Dimitri's Saturday workshop, we talked about our weaknesses as writers. I thought about how -- with the ability to try anything, accomplish anything, create or destroy anything -- I so often fall short of my ambitions. "On a blank page, I can do anything," I often think, with a boldness that rarely surfaces in my work. So, when prompted, I became a hollow men in 11 lines, and even ended the poem, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, with a whimper.

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About Me

Behold the hollow man.
Behold the writer without a soul.
Behold my face,

The lines that formed and hardened
When my brow furrowed in suppression,
When I pursed my lips and kept silent.

Hear the poems I never wrote.
Imagine images I dared not share.
Watch the ghost of me dissolve.

As I disappear,
without a whimper.