3:30: Nocturnes & Etudes

By Geoff Peterson

3:30 a man wakes up after hearing a voice. He flips on a light and searches his memory. Someone or something has sent a message that requires a response or immediate action. Reaching for pen & paper, he waits for words to begin. The texts that follow are half-conscious attempts at recognizing that these same words preceded this life and had directed it from before the beginning.

Readers Comments
Emerging from a hypnagogic state, Peterson writes of love, loss and a way home. His poems hover off-shore between lands end and the horizon. Stumbling through the pains of aging only makes the work more poignant.
Douglas Leichter, artist
New York-Tucson

3:30 is terrifically dense and by turns morose, enlightening and painfully touching, many of the pieces uncomfortably surreal
Trish Haines,
Dharma disciple

Hard-bitten poems of aging & loss: The man carried the death of his mother throughout his life. Add to that the loss of Margot, his lover of later years, and he wakes at 3:30, inconsolable. It takes courage to write these poems and even more to publish them, and sometimes as much to read them.
Andrew Vinca
Poet on the Roof

These poems speak to the uncertainty & vulnerability we experience upon waking in the pre-dawn and glimpsing up close that were but a small cog in an unfathomable universe, and still we long for people & places weve lost.
Lisa A. Sharp, featherweight

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546210603

Geoff Peterson

Born just after World War II, Peterson inherited his mother's nervous system and went on to memorize and perform poetry in a lyric vein for family and card parties. Raised Catholic, the boy learned the value of dreams, visions, and the soothing aspects of prayer in unison. He later earned degrees in Literature and Writing at Eastern Washington University, and served as poetry editor for Willow Springs Magazine. With the publication of his first novel in 1989, Peterson turned his back on mainstream publishing and has not looked back. Since 2007 he has published nearly thirty books of poetry and fiction. He lives in the Southwest and still gets around.

Book preview

© 2017 Geoff Peterson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/02/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1059-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-1060-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedicated to…

Jim Reiter & Steve Wagner

for heading up the St. Michael’s

walking blues & meditation salon

and holding a seat open.

God gives the solitary

a home and brings forth

prisoners into freedom…

          —Psalm 68

That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.

          —Franz Kafka

Never answer questions that haven’t been asked…

nor ask questions that will

not be answered.

          —Claude C.

          Tips for a Happy Heart

          (unpublished)

Intro: ars alchemica

In Spanish there’s a word for it: madrugada, the hour before dawn, the Witching Hour or Hour of the Wolf, when a crack in the world’s shell appears. In night’s deepest tunnel a man awakens to a scratching deep within. Here the truth can feel like a shiv to the belly.

I don’t mean the Ways & Means Committee in the anterior lobe, but the voz de madrugada, the down & dirty that says remain on the line, message forthcoming. I mean notes in a minor key where the mood is somber and the static