After the Setting Sun
by James Coburn
There was a hole in life
when The Edmond Sun was shuttered.
All those people, all the stories
I listened to, rest within me.
Faces photographed, written words
reached a mountain top,
for a clearer vision of myself.
Hemispheric currents linked oceans
as change was inevitable.
But the hole filled
a sacred ground flowing into
a river carving a canyon grand
under a starry sky.
Endlessly.
How lovely the symphony
plays when the clock
stops in silence,
and old tunes
expand in the heavens.
The lingering smell of ink,
tapping of the keyboard,
unsettling newsroom conversations
into long days and nights
ended when locking the back door
and turning out the lights.
Deadlines were somehow managed.
Fleeting anxious moments
primed me to give
my best.
And, I have absorbed all
the kindness given to me
and realize that witnessing
life is a blessing,
here on a remote planet
like none other.
Ebb Tides
James Coburn
I’m haunted by the
Vanity Fair magazines
I threw away from the
1980-90s.
Had to move.
I am haunted by the albums
I abandoned when moving
exhausted me years ago.
The attachments of life.
I have remnants from my
ancestors and, it haunts me
that my family may not keep
them, or my street photography from
New York City, Boston,
and Sandtown in Oklahoma City.
Or trash my poetry in a
couple of generations,
sell my grandfather’s gold
pocket watch that collected
time.
Expectations of life.
An 1880s scrapbook from New Orleans,
postcards from the 1920s,
The diary and letters of a WWI Marine in Soissons.
A sudden rain.
And the way variegated
light from a window
crosses a dim room.
But some specks of
stardust from the moment
of my birth passing into
the opaque night
will survive,
passing, penetrating in
colors never seen.
And this will not be
remembered by me.
It will be broad as moonlight
and swift as imagination
congealing in what distilled
within.
(Editor’s note: To submit poetry, prose, short stories, art or other creative writing for publication on NonDoc, please write to editorial@nondoc.com. Other submissions for commentaries or reporting can be sent there as well. NonDoc accepts submissions from all over the world and seeks to provide a platform for a diverse group of voices. As always, Letters to the Editors can be submitted by emailing letters@nondoc.com.)
