A Taste of Poetry From Dan!

Taking Measure


Cool nights and mild sunny days make sweet grapes.
Good shoes can reshape the arches.
Holding a hand can balance a difficult step.

And we change—if we didn’t we’d be old crusty socks.
We’d be beef jerky whose double-dose of preservatives
make us taste like cow chips.

What is the measure of all this change?
Sears doesn’t sell a measuring cup
to pour our “daily did’s” or “nightly do’s” into.

Yet we can open a bottle of wine
and know the sun it took in.

We can put bread in the oven
and see the fortitude of its yeast in rise.

We can put the cream of what we do in a churn
and account for buttermilk and butter.

We can take our shoes off, massage our feet
and sooth the steps of each new day.

We can smile and turn frowns around just for grins.

We can look around us and see
the character of heart
of those we have been
through changes with
and in that
take measure.

© 2009 Dan Kantak

Dan Kantak Presents "Numbers"

Numbers

As a child
my kitchen had no walls
and everything ranged
in big bubbling pots of
winter, spring, summer, autumn,
peas, carrots, corncob days
husked, rising to the surface
in the golden bullion
of universal soup.
Numbers. Numbers. Numbers,
numbers were something
I wanted more than anything.
Wanted ten shopping carts
filled with ice cream.
Wanted sixteen cases of orange soda.
Wanted to be eighteen—
then twenty one.
Wanted five girlfriends and
two more for the weekend.
Wanted the power of numbers.
More was magic, majestic, and magnificent.
I never understood the numbers
in my parent's heart.
The endless trying to make
two plus two equal five.
Didn’t know that numbers
could numb and murder the soul.
That the Judas tree of numbers
can have countless limbs
and still give no shade under the finite sun.

Now as a man of numbers
the weight of my ledger
middling in years, thinning of hair
records my loss and my gain and
I realize that love and life are singular.
Now I long for one true thought.
One poem that braves enough to be.
One person whom I can be infinite with.
One is so rare a number.

© 2009 Dan Kantak