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This Poet's Corner

WELCOME TO THIS POET’S CORNER!

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innerchild4.jpg
My Inner Child Picture! - You Choose An Old Photo That You Think Best Captures Your Spirit!

Welcome to my site. I have so many divers and sundry interests that it is hard to keep up with myself. I’m cursed to be an artist both visual and if you dare to stay and sample a few, I hope with some knack for poetry. I’m not sure at how good I am at any of these, but as it is the some total of my torture and my bliss, I warrant I best make the best of it all, it being my life- that life being lived as I will live it and my opinions how little weight they merit what I will reckon from the muddle of my brow and the brain behind it. I will leave you to it now adding  just a few bits more, so that before you lick the ink you may be forewarned to move on if you’d prefer; I am a patriot, and I am liberal. Either I am so far to the left I may fall off the edge of the earth or most of the world has moved so far to the right, in my lifetime, I fear, they’ve fallen into a sort of hell. I am an unapologetic Homosexual and like so many of these, more than you might suspect a father and a grandfather. I only hope that when I die, I’ve been the best of all of these that I could be. Finally, I am descended from the original nine families that founded Smiths and Tangier Islands smack dab in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. My grandmother was born there but was moved then to the tip of St. Mary’s County sometime around the turn of the century. I was there that by happenstance and a good fortune, so similar to Truman Capote’s, I was raised by a magical and duly dysfunctional family on a peninsula that is today St. Mary’s State Park-that is to say that much of my boyhood, mostly the long hot summers, were spent on the sandy shores of where the Potomac and Chesapeake Collide. And now, if you please, I would be honored if you would tarry and read. E. D. Ridgell

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Credits:



I wrote my first poem in 1999, in that year of the death of my significant other. I immediately knew I had embarked on that search for the soul or the solid self that is so broken at the loss of someone we truly love. In short, I knew poetry was a medium for reinventing myself.

Since those beginnings, I have read poetry hosted by The Samaritan Counseling Center of Lancaster Pa.
For awhile. I was a movie and event's critic for Walt's World an online GLBT 'zine' on the social network site Journalspace. Some of these 'crits' can be read on pages 18 through 20 along with some short stories.

I've also delved into the short story, commentary, etc.

For some two years, I acted as a moderator at Wordflair, another online zine that is part of the Yuku network more British than American. I led a forum on Wordflair called "Taking Risks" where I encouraged my peers to "try to think out of the box"- to realize that to create anything remotely new and unexperienced you must first destroy what has fossilized into the academic rules and proprieties that must never be broken. I'm not a rebel. I am a simple artist.

Six poems appear in 'A Bouquet of Poetry' an anthology compiled by S.M.Zang and Jean Lewis, c.2007. The word "bouguet" is derived from the Greek meaning "a collection of". Details on ordering can be found at the bottom of page 5.

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All poems, original art work, prose, etc. are copyrighted under the name, E.D. Ridgell. Should you wish to use any of the material you find here, contact me, and usually concur. This should not be assumed.

The pictures and some of the multi-media are not always my own and may be subject to the copyright and ownership of others, and should anyone object to their use, please contact me, and I will promptly delete them. No plagiarism is intended. Anything submitted to other sites, contests, etc. is published here, first, so as to establish copyright. Thank you.
© 2008-2010 by E.D. Ridgell


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exmoreva.jpg
The Pier Out Back Of My Father's Place In Exmore Va...circa 1970

Exmore Virginia

Rain seemed fast fleeting netting nothing
’cept a dizzyingly white and dazzling sunlight
leaving me happily harbored in crisp clean colors.

The Bay froze over just the one year,
backing the house to an icy black mirror of creek;
a miracle to marvel and one I’ve nary seen since.

In spring, spreading out o’er a quarter mile
grew nurseries of azalea and rhododendron
stopped short at eroded cliffs breaking on your reason.

Green and yellow tufted mustard fields
growing wild either side the road waked the ride.
The honk at the turn often startled a partridge or a bobwhite.

Georgia Gal, the shepherd friend to your old age,
guarding the white washed house so comfortable,
barked a greeting pretending not to be glad.

Each summer had goals to mark those years;
Masons' breakfasts, garden victories, and churchly things-

harvesting by right the immigrant neighbor’s crab pots.

You drifted there to stay some years before,
to dry dock and wait your turn at being a Bay ghost,
a merchant mariner as dignified as The Cleo fading away 'side the road.

Everything about you bespoke lower Bay.
Coming home that fall to the Delmarva
chronicled you; bow high, into the family log.

And anchored there, you found the blue green harmony
resonant of that water ring round this land,
so flat, sandy, and scented of high tide.

Reckoning my life amidst these grassy shores,
I too love this tribal land and claim my marshy share,
your grateful son and heir to the Chesepiooc.


© 2006 E.D. Ridgell

Contact me at: er21120@msn.com

thebowfront.jpg

Her Devoted Bow-Front

 

For so long she has entrusted me with

Scribbled secrets and rhyming recipes-

Now at death she has no more right to these

Than the felled, pine tree that gave form to me.

 

I’ve been robbed of pigeon carry

Scooped from the top three-

I’ll be damned if I’ll surrender

Her pensive, scripts, ribbon wrapped in the bottom!

 

Tug and pull faithful to her final fancies-

The heat waves of mischief flowing o’er me.

Swell my final bastion’s walls-

I’ll wait out this designee’s impulsivity!

 

How I’ll miss the gentle tug of her-

The considerate closing of the parts of me,

And the reflective sweep of that small hand

Upon veneers wed to her devoted bow-front.

© 2008 by E.D. Ridgell

Creative Commons License*The photo [ Emily Dickinson's Bowfront ] is the property of
The President and Fellows of Harvard College

 

 

 

 

 

To order A Bouquet of Poetry in which some of my poems are published:

For a therapist in the Philadelphia area that also has a background in Art Therapy:

For a psychoanalyst in the Lancaster area who is an artist and when approrriate uses art in the treatment program:

Maryland Institute College of Art : BFA, '69', MFA '78'

Amazing Arizona Landscape Artist

 

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NYCTRIPJUNE0532secondsize.jpg

AT THE MOMA 2005
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Courbet and Those Roe Deer

Guy dubbed you
fat, dirty, and greasy,
awestruck at
your drunken wave.

Green grottos, deep,
centered to black holes,
Sapho’s sisters’
wish-fulfillments,
captured me;
held me there,
light headed.

Perceiving you were
complete by your own design,
bail bonded my return;
dead mentored to
canvas again
crude hanging rows.

I stared at those mineral oily,
roe deer,
perpetual,
yet primordial.

You slashed, and left undisguised,
rabbit skinned ground. At times,
you bristled at any hair;
your knife was left
not wiped.

Forbearing and unglazed,
hind limply down,
strung as on the spit,
you persevered. I understood,
there was so little time.
©2007 by E.D. Ridgell

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The above poem is very significant for me. I had occasion to see an exhibit of Courbet's and noticed how crudely some deer were rendered in some of his paintings. Upon research I found that Courbet came late to the vocation of painting and consequently had no formal training. I have come to the art of writing late, not until the age of fifty.
I was formally trained as a visual artist and for some thirty years the vocabulary I brought to any work of art was that of the elements and principles of design as used to describe painting or sculpture- the fine arts. That does not matter, however, as these are universal to all forms of art. The words are often different, however. The term meter and movement, for example would mean the same thing. Alliteration is simply a kind of pattern. I'll never have time to learn the extensive vocabulary that is unique to poetry and writing alone, but like Courbet I will use the time remaining to me to try and do so, while concentrating principally on the making of good written works without any real formal training in literature or writing. To some degree, I think this may very well work in my favor as I have less restrictions and presumed expectations to live up to. Art is universal and can be reduced to simple and easily understood principles and elements of design, but change in art often comes from thinking outside the box and by sheer accident resulting, in my opinion from the artist embracing the untried- the habit of taking risks. EDR.

puyipic2.jpg


The Demise of the Mandarin

 

See my little wing quiver so

As I lie here atop the snow!

Water is surely free I think.
I only wanted a tiny drink.

 

Something is broke within I know.

I can not lift and rise to go.

So happy was I on the brink

Eager at a dawn’s early pink;

 

Very frightened, left alone,

Lamenting others who have flown-

Fled they so high into a sky

Never more into will I fly.

 

What rudely broke my perfect wing

So swift and sudden came the sting,

Dropping me from an upward lift

Leaving regal feathers rudely rift?

 

Something struck me swift and cruel,

Sharp tipped from side a northern pool,

Amidst the warnings of little swallows

Urging me to flap and follow.

 

And where’s gone fidelity

In the face of so little pity,

Here now in a shadow of Showa,

Falling fast with a final, “Q

                                            U

                                               A”?

 

                        © 2009 E.D.Ridgell



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Stings for the Kinsmen

The whimbly, wambly kinsfolk little knew
the letters faint yet folded with caring
and tossed into trash bin, an act to rue,
yet were treasured writs of love so daring.
Sometimes a tolling bell is the siren,
sounding need for rash and hasty action,
as locks go changing and time does upend
leaving doubtful future expectation.
The reasons cliquey-tricky they soon see,
speed a griever’s misgivings aplenty;
and into the lock of grief goes a key
as anger turns unlocking no bounty.
Like to poisoned kisses sent on the wings
swiftly quills do leave kinsmen many stings.
© 2007 by E.D. Ridgell


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 The Latest Poems



[Dedicated to Trissa Tatiana, my Daughter] 
 

Be Positive If You Would Be Forever Young

 

Pessimism is a poor proponent

For anything but failure.

You must first pick the old thread out

Before you sew the new garment.

The bottom is the firmest place to be

Because the only way is up.

It is when everyone has lost hope that

The successful make their moves.

 

Alexander untied the Gordian knot

In the flash of a slash of steel.

Napoleon reached down and picked up

The crown of France from out the gutter.

Lenin took a train east by invitation.

Spitfires flew into the bright orb

To disappear into heaven hands.

Truman against all odds airlifted hope in;

Ceasar crossed a river

That had once known elephant dung.

 

They call these latest optimists the millenniums,

And hawker on how difficult they will have it.

We are in what they call the great recession;

A metaphor for the changing of the guard,

One of many corrections inevitable with time.

The violated virgins of generations before

Resist and resent the demarcation from business as before.

 

The future is not ours to know. Today is all we have.

Your day is yours. My day is mine.

I’ll pick flowers from out my garden and

Strew them about my geography,

Grateful for their beneficence to keep me positive.

Label me a miscreant if they must, but I will go to they’re

Gallows with garlands ‘round my neck,

And fragrances, the last sensation, of all that is positive

From out the garden.

                                    © August 22, 2010 by E.D. Ridgell 

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                   Exit, Stage Right!

 

We donned her TrissaTo be different,

Then Tatiana after a little

Princess who was rumored

To have foiled fate long ago,

Only to learn she did not

Dodge the missiles.

 

But low, ours was favored

Above that innocent namesake.

Our's was then,And is now, words

That dissolve into tears

At the very thought of any harm

To her, Trissa Tatiana.

 

Time has brought its inevitable changes;

Blessings and sorrows

Replete with tides of tedious rituals

Of That farce we try to play out

So well, too often to little avail.

 

We've had luck- made and shaped

As we contrived the need for it.

Now, each of us can go comfortably

Into those head lights,

High-beamed into that night,

Where with luck and deliverance one can exit,

With grace and good timing-

Stage right,

And dare not look down or back

For the fear of it!

                                 © 2010 by E.D. Ridgell

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Wanda 

Tom dubbed you Gloria Swanson,

Seeing you carry away gladiolas

From the Syrian Mosque.

That you were an act of grace was always evident.

 

 

You started sorting lines before I did.

You stopped at the DAR;

Grand-mothered your loved ones in,

All between bridge games.

 

 

I shoveled just a little deeper;

Found that link, followed the yellow brick road.

I delved into the blue veins. I rattled bones under armor.

I took it beyond the pale. It was the least I could do.

 

 

Now it hangs around our necks

A long necklace of names and personalities,

Divers and sundry histories,

Not to be worn as adornment but to firmly ground us.

 

 

You go to rest, at last, with him-

The young artist, the husband and father

Taken too soon-his lineage Fairmount,

Oriole, Deal Island-fair, fair, faraway England.

 

 

I started my line, my lineage, when suddenly,

Our ancestral graves were bumping up against one another.

Coincidences- too many, don’t you feel-

One of those meaningless miracles with meaning?

 

 

He was Maryland, the sandy gritty, high tide smell

Of marshy Maryland. I am Maryland.

Your only daughter’s only daughter is Maryland.

The great-grandchildren are washed-way sediment of Maryland.

 

 

But you were so much a link in a longer line of history,

Henrico County- Williamsburg Virginia.

How came you to be born in Texas?

What in the hell were you doing in Elizabeth, New Jersey?

 

 

What of Delmarva? What of the Governor's Palace?

There are so many questions we leave unanswered,

By right, by neglect, by our tightly held secrets;

Those secrets that would explain so much.

 

 

Tom lays within the green, cut, Green, waiting.

I could not help shared roots dug into my ground or was it vice versa?

Did I trigger memories of your heart’s deadening?

So many troubled years before-did I trigger secret sorrows?

 

 

Two artists from the same school, one a husband,

Another a fast fleeting son-in-law? It was eerie. It was awe.

We may have been more entangled than we know.

I have my secrets. I am the lonelier for them.

 

 

I’m grieving a whole bloody peninsula

On the other side of the Bay,

That he with the sudden, broken, beating heart,

May have shared veins to that now closed artery.

 

 

Remember Exmore?

You and Dad could not have been more different,

And yet there was a connection. Well, one obvious thing,

But it was more than that. You were of the same generation.

 

 

I have a photograph of you at Exmore walking back from the Bay.

You were happy, but you were lonely.

I realize now that Dad was lonely.

Everyone is lonely at the core.

 

 

It all means less and less, I know. Even to me, I no longer need.

I just wanted to say farewell. Now, there is one less scribe.

We will carry on. We will root out and record some of those secrets.

You now are privy to the greatest secret of all.

 

 

Unless the dead do read, you will never see this,

I did not want to burden you. I have never wished to be a sink box decoy.

I write this for time to come, a reflection of time gone by. I scribe.

It is meant to honor you. The long journey of life is over.

 

 

Have no fear for those left behind. Pray for us.

Your worldly pain is over.

Thank God, hey? Anyway,

Well done, Wanda! Well done, indeed!

                                                                 © 2010 by E.D. Ridgell

 

[Dedicated to an elephant eye, high name on a shiny, black wall]

 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell!

 

Don’t ask

Of when you discover you’re one’ a those freaks

The other kids are slinging pejoratives about.

Don’t tell parents of those innocents

Who kill themselves, secrets strangling school tie necks.

 

Don’t ask

Society’s, scapegoat divorcee what it’s like

To have loved but not lusted after.

Don’t tell

The kid two hearts were not broken.

 

Don’t ask

How you struggled up, out of the their dung,

To stand stalwart ‘fore the sacrimonious.

Don’t tell

Of enlisted resurrections for fear of more crucifixions.

 

Don’t ask

The names of friends and lovers

Blamed for a plague not their making.

Don’t tell

Which part of a heavy, crowded heart houses these relics.

 

Don’t ask

About history's hoards of the unconsecrated,

Except beheld in the golden eye of God who “doesn’t play dice”.

Don’t tell

Of that lonely pain of bent would be widows and widowers.

 

Don’t ask

The indentify of my soldier lover

Drowned down in a rice field.

Don’t tell

Less they strip away a memory gone dull- never sullied.

 

Don’t ask

Of this wise old fag’s bemusement-

Walking pneumonia reverent at a recent ceremony.

Don’t tell

Of light bulb on, muffled guffaw “fore The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

                                                                          © 2010 by E.D. Ridgell

 














tapestrybest.jpg

The Antique Tapestry

 You are a mystery of intricacy.

My jewelry loop moves over the surface and

There is nothing that does not fascinate me.

 

St. George slaying the dragon, in an Amish home?

Is this not idolatry? You seem not to care,

Anxious for the sale, one of many things that fit better into a lot.

 

I count more than twelve colors and the wool is interwoven with a thread,

Black and nettled throughout  holding everything together.

I see no other foundation. I marvel at such craftsmanship.

 

Your boys, handsome and blond

Contrast with faded dark pants with darned holes, here and there,

Worn unashamedly. All of you have that beautiful complexion.

 

There is little dirt but a patina that is overall and lovely.

I think the wool is homespun, but I am uncertain,

And there is that one color that does not look naturally dyed.

 

It struck me that there is no adult male,

And I wonder if I’m shunned dealing with a woman.

I buy your put-up delicacies though willingly paying twice a store shelf price.

 

I know already I want to purchase it. I want to study it in a detailed leisure.

Its value right now is just a reflection of your needs and impatience with my deliberation.

I want to know its history. I want the key to a mystery.

 

You are silent when quizzed but you don’t look away.

I ask too much and remember your hospitality.

I will not press you on this. I sense this is a private matter.

 

It is old, yes, very old, but in a condition that reflects much care.

I see one or two small holes before the window light but of no real concern.

I realize I am spending too much time perusing its back. I must flip it over.

 

You have begun to direct the boys to box and carry the things to the van.

Your pencil moves quickly and I see a struggle with the addition.

I must not loiter and be out of here. I can feel you want me gone.

 

I gaze again at the motif and continue to wonder how it came into Amish hands.

It is continental, I’m sure of it. My mind spins at the beauty of it, and

I am already hooked into every detail and am eager to make away with my treasure.

 

You stand watching me negotiate the bumpy drive, not aware of the layer of history

Just added to the diary of this tapestry. You are relieved to be rid of it, and I am glad to Rescue it.

Your darned holes are contemporary. Mine are the open holes of history.

                                                                                                   © 2007 by E.D. Ridgell

 

TheDungareeDoll.jpg

The Dungaree Doll

Under a dark pall
On the silken road
South an ancient wall

Robes of the yellow
Caress worn red tiles
Aligned all just so

With Her face white
For a final opera
Under the majestic moonlight

As the dragons fight
Amid the celestial clouds
Round the imperial kite

The queued men kowtow
Side bound lotus feet
All foreheads ground low

Borne into a Hall
For the Manchu rites
Dictates of ancestral law

Seal closed the tomb
Litter Pu Yi away
Barren of Her womb

Force the perfect pearl
Out a lock-jawed mouth
Spoils unto some earl

Sullied grandfathers in shame
Of the dungaree doll
Unseeded brother can't blame

A slit eyed whore
Docent on that square
Giving foreigners the tour

With plans to woo
But a single son
She's chosen on Bidu

Olive fatiqued comrades sleep
Heavily donned in stars
As angry ancestors weep

© 2006 E.D.Ridgell
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eagle.jpg



I Am The Eagle,

the stark predator
back dropped by the dazzling sun.
I measure and reckon upon details;
the direction and velocity of winds.
My talons clutch in a last grip
and the beak, razor edged, rips and tears.

The aerie lies near the lake
in the shadow of the high mountain,
unlike the hawk roosting in the valley nearby,
deep within the screeching woodland.
Many take no heed of me
bewaring nothing soaring so faraway,
meandering in a distance too foreign
for them to see, or fear.

But, coming into that geography,
the boundary and parameter of my sharp sight,
I only need to pounce in a lightning catch and
swoop them up into some convenient perch.
Unlike them, trapped in a scheme
not of their making, no carrion do I seek.
No trap awaits me.

They are sited movement caught by my eye,
a tribute to be taken; ripped and torn,
pieced just so, for ripe and particular appetites.
The first course is mine and measured to my need.
The second, gleanings of the harvested carcass,
the smaller, savory pieces, I deliver to
frenzied, nestled eaglets hungry for my return.

I am forever soaring above,
seeking an unguarded opportunity,
when they chance a safety that does not exist.
This is my eminent rank. This is their lower link.
They feed me and mine according to that covenant,
governing all things, including me the eagle.

© 2009 by E.D. Ridgell

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Watersheds of the Chesapioc

With leathered hide and liver spots,
like a bay bobcat,
I melt into these surroundings.

Comfortable and well heeled as you were,
some half a century ago, 
I watched you shoplift for the sport of it.

You nick’d the immigrant’s crab pots,
well within the eye of his spy glass, both content
in friendship and your discretion’s count.

All those flat, sandy, fields of bounty-
you were due a small measure of,
by right of lineage, a small sober tally.

How many a capsizing did you dupe
with your disciplined dog paddle?
How many folk did you grieve down-drowned?

These lands derived from our clans-
We harvested both soil and water ‘fore settling
into soggy graves more unmarked than not.

Slowly stewed in brine and blood,
your setting son, takes his turn at the wheel,
well seasoned for his watch, and
steers these careworn, waked waters;
navigates his generation’s storms-
in watersheds of a once, shellfish full Chesapioc.

                                 © 2009 by E.D. Ridgell
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