Blue Music: Poems

By Albert W. Starkey

Empty shells are on the shore
The living ones are out to sea.
Come then and follow me
I have some friends with a boat
AWS
from And He Descended Into Hell

So begins an invitation to a journey. In this moving collection of poems, Al Starkey travels into vast and often uncertain territory. He grapples with an array of topics and questionslove, despair, joy, darkness, hope, ignorance, wisdom, injustice, failure, faith, growing old, death, heaven and helltaking us on a sometimes precarious, sometimes uproarious, ride. Blue Music gives us a glimpse into one mans inner landscape in ways that can echo into our own lives, sounding into the depths, giving voice to becoming fully alive, purely authentic, uniquely whole and in service to something beyond ourselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469162591

Albert W. Starkey

Albert Starkey is a past winner of The Atlanta Reviews International poetry competition, a winner of the International Library of Poetrys Open Poetry Contest and most recently, a winner of the 2016 Carriage House Poetry Prize of Tiferet Journal. His poetry has been published in several journals, magazines and two anthologies. It has also been exhibited in Cape Cod art galleries and twice aired on NPRs WCAI, Poetry Sunday in 2017. He is the author of four other collections of poetry titled, On Eireanns Edge, Moonrise Soon, Blue Music and Closer. Al and his wife, Susan have lived for extended periods in their much beloved Ireland over the past fifteen years. They currently reside in the village of Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts.

Book preview

B L U E

M U S I C

Copyright © 2012 by Albert W Starkey.

Cover Photo by Declan Counihan, Cork City, Ireland.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012902250

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-6258-4

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-6257-7

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-6259-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

111468

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the following people and publicists who have encouraged and/or published my poetry over the years: Suzie Ryan, Eric Haarer and Connie Bielecki of The Spiritual Life Institute and Desert Call; The Atlanta Review; The International Library of Poetry Journal; The Adirondack Review; The Amateur Poetry Journal; the wonderful Gaelic poet, Cathal O’Searcaigh for applauding my first book of poems, On Eireann’s Edge which was written in Ireland; the inestimable Robert Bly for ripping to shreds my second book, Far Afield, so that I might more patiently and agonizingly work on putting it back together in a far more thoughtful way; and mostly my wife and companion, Susan, who has lovingly and supportingly sought publication of my poetry, arranged poetry readings and put up with what Antonio Machado called, a mad and lunar poet, an ordinary man lost in dreams for all these years.

True Poetry is what does not pretend to be poetry.

It is the dogged drafts of a few maniacs

seeking the new encounter.

—Francis Ponge, 1952

CONTENTS

Lunar Eclipse

Solstice

San Juan Sonnet

On a Given Day

Time and Again

New Year’s Resolution

If You’ll Excuse Me, Please

House

The Swing

Tabula Rasa

Autobiography

Bird Feeder

Release

Staring at the Giant

A Zest for Life

Taciturn

I Know What You Mean Now, Rainer

Going In

Thoughts about Nothing

Turning Sixty

In the Pagoda at the Denver Botanic Gardens

Blue Music

The Game

Zinnias

The Clothier

Night Writing

He Knows Not How

A Breath Away

Things Won’t Matter

Winter Scene

At the Moment

Parable

Nag Hammadi

Making Anne Sexton a Martini

Wren Dream

Crow Talk

Moving to the City

The Nameless

Occupy Dexter Street

The Homeless

Being Left

A Decade Later

Troy Anthony Davis

The Field

Black and White and Red All Over

Triduum

Good Friday Sonnet

Advent

Beyond the Sonnet

His Kingdom Comes

A Kind of Faith

Music at Sunset across the Baca Grande

Beneath a Dark Window

More about Boats

One Day, A White Hawk

Worn Thin

Horizon

Wanderers

Having Known You

Power Trip

The Verb

Just One

Moment by Moment

Heaven

Unheard-of Intuitions

Upon Waking

Found Poems

In the Kingdom of Insecurity

A New Cure for Depression

On the Outbreak of Enthusiasm

Lunar Eclipse

With your eyes, lift one black tree up

So it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.

With that, you have made the world.

—R. M. Rilke

A moon-tide of night crests in the city.

Sensible looking houses stare at one another

From across empty streets, without a sound.

The earthen pots on all their front porches

Are still holding on to what’s already died:

Dreams of much more beneath the sky.

We become the mirror of what we oppose

From the certainty of our side of the street

And see a church that has now transfigured

Body and blood into wafers and wine

As expectation turns finally into regret.

Yet on this darkest night, we leave our house

Moving well past the porch and earthen pots

And with eyes raised beyond church steeples

Into a sky that always seemed black and white

We take in a wafer, blooming in bloody radiance.

Winter Solstice, 2010

Solstice