Daniel Thompson was born in Tübingen in the Black Forest of southern Germany and moved to New Orleans at six years old. He lives and writes poetry there to this day. His latest work can be read in The Banyan Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Orchards Poetry Journal and will be upcoming in The Chiron Review, New Square, San Pedro River Review, and The Delta Review.
The sinewy limbs of the tree cast blue and gold,
Torn across the afternoon light, inseparable
From the puffy splotches of the lit-up evening sky.
Diabolical— strange gold and red
Slants of late afternoon and
Hallucinatory dyes and gradations of gray.
Strolling through the Mediterranean hot breath,
Screams of a twisting Watusi of loneliness,
And drenched intrusions trickled with melancholy.
When the hard barky muscles and slimy wet
Leaves in the stillness following the rain
Confronts the softness of the weekends in retreat—
The form of the tree yawning through
The motions of my alchemic dreams
Merging the undulations and shape-shifting
Forms meaning tree
HYMN OF THE MOUNTAINS OF ATLANTIS
The strength of the sea; the gift of the land’s blessing.
The four sloping peaks that overlook the valleys of fertility.
Peak of Arrial, southern home of Ceres,
Gentle, pleasing with verdant meadows,
Wildflowers of purple and pink, carpets of yellow
And honeysuckle, and lavender.
Dryades to the north, extreme winter mountain
Of Demeter, northern outpost of the Kingdom of Death.
Black in its cutting form, softened by a coat of ice,
Instinctually fierce, perched and ready to pounce.
Eastern Caecubes, the open gateway to Spain.
Softer in its form, but alive with energies and
Wreaths of garlands of laurel and blood-like roses.
The slope that gives way to views of the mighty
Skin of the Atlantic, the crawling plain of Aquatic gardens.
The sloping passage to the Pillars of Heracles.
And to the west, Diogenes, the rolling endless
Hill where many shepherds sleep the days of midsummer
Stillness through, as flocks spread like seawater across.
Here the farms stand prosperous, the finest lands
Claimed by the men of the most well-standing and oldest
Families of the island. Diogenes the Life-Sustainer, the
Empyreal, flowing sheet of flourishing growth.
And between these peaks— the rolling land of wild
Topography cradling the capital City of Waters.
The land where first iron was crafted by
Gift of the productive Hephaestus, his studio
Of military power entrenched and absolute.
Where commerce flowed outward towards
Barrier islands and Mediterranean ports.
Where the laurel crowns grace the graves of the
Poets in the great stone-yard cemetery. Where
Urania’s army singes the soaked grounds
With fiery hoofbeats and clangs of chariots.
Ground giving forth ghosts back to the black waters.
Hooves of flame, beasts of steel and tin.
Smoke-laced runes dissolving into salt.
AN OUTDATED PORT
The harbor melts into turquoise white,
And blue-white and green-white spray,
And makes a halo where land and water meet;
Like an impressionist painting from across the room,
Or like the slides of the violins encircle and
Entwine with the low groans of cellos;
Or daisy meadows grace grasslands with
Lupines, bluebells, forget-me-nots, and pansies.
How my memories glide by, supple and slow,
And soft half-remembered words and tunes
Come and go. Lavish waves lick and lap
Against sharp stones. How, undisturbed, my ear
Picks up the sea froth. The visions of the harbor
Buildings, pink and decayed, where falls and flakes
The coral dry paint and dots along the shore below
With the sharp shards of shells in cerulean,
Black, silver-gold, cream green, and glittery white.
Poetry in this post: © Daniel Thompson
Published with the permission of Daniel Thompson