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Serving a little poetic nourishment Monday thru Friday and featuring a Short Play Saturday Matinee to read.

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Paul Hooker

Ghosts – A Poem by Paul Hooker

Ghosts
a poem by Paul Hooker

Ghosts
By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.
—Diana Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn.

You are not alone here.

The mirror cracks and shatters
In myriad tinkling falling slivers
That whisper like a Judas kiss.
A thousand eyes, framed by a thousand faces
Accuse, forgive, dissect and reassemble.
But the parts don’t match, and symmetry
Is vanity’s vision.
Did you think your secrets would survive this?

Your name, too, lies
Shattered among the shards.
It is not so much that you pretended
But that you trusted the pretending.
It is not so much that you dreamed
But that you thought you were worthy
of a dream.

No surprise, then, that this mirror broke,
But that it was one piece so long,
So many years allowing the impression
Of one face, one well-considered spirit,
Serenity, solidity, self-control.
But behind the eyes, so many.

So very many.
Too shattered now for re-collection,
Too many razored reasons,
Too many jagged memories,
Cut deep the fingers given to repair.
The fissured faces speak with single voice;
From a thousand mouths, they tell
The truth:
No glue can mend the fragments of a shattered soul.

Mirrors are haunted houses.

About the Author:

Paul Hooker is a retired Presbyterian minister and seminary professor, avid fly fisherperson, jazz bassist, and poet. He is the author of two poetry collections, Days and Times and The Hole in the Heart of God, both from Resource Publications in Eugene, OR. He lives in Austin, TX, with his wife and, having successfully graduated from obedience training, is the obedient servant of Calder the dog.

Poetry Breakfast is an online journal publishing poetry and short plays.
If you’d like your poems considered for publication visit our Poetry Submissions page.
If you’d like your short play considered for publication visit our Short Play Submissions page.

Green – A Poem by Paul Hooker

Green
…the leaping greenly spirits of trees…
e.e. cummings

Green is the truest color.
It does not lift its eyes too high.
It does not hate like red, nor rage
with orange
nor put on purple’s kingly pretense,
nor like cerulean make promises
it cannot keep.

It has a pulse
like a spring swelling, spilling
over moss-covered stones,
or a tree
planted alongside waters,
grown wise in wisdom’s way;
it does not boast

but knows
green is not the last word;
there will be urgent warnings,
red and orange,
before the nights of ice and brown,
when gray winds growl it bare of truths.
They roil away.

And, too, it knows
a calm slow turning toward morning
on the leeward side of fury,
—not yet but when?—
deep inside the heartwood darkness
there births another green, still furled,
waiting to be true.

 

About the Poet:  Paul Hooker is a native Southerner, a Presbyterian minister, and a member of the faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Raised in Nashville and Birmingham, he holds degrees from the University of Tennessee (BA), Union Presbyterian Seminary (DMin), and Emory University (PhD). He has served as pastor to congregations in Kingsport, TN and Atlanta, GA, and as an Executive Presbyter in Jacksonville, FL. In addition to writing poetry, he plays jazz bass guitar; both activities speak to his yearning l to create beauty. He is a husband, father, and grandfather.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

When It Isn’t There – A Poem by Paul Hooker

When It Isn’t There

It’s what the bees are busy with, hive-deep, where no light reaches and the constant drone of action serves to make the sweetness those whose labor makes it never taste.

It’s what the land that flows with milk and— flows with, even if more desire than dish, a morsel in the mouths of weary wanderers who yet taste it only in their dreams.

It’s the name I call you when not thinking of your name but who you are or what you mean or more likely what reward I’m yearning to taste when we are done with conversation.

It’s what remains on my lips after our kiss in the dark, the light at last extinguished and the dog now settled, sighing, in the corner and I wait to taste the respite of shared sleep.

Is it not a wonder, how life’s sweetness is sweetest not handled, owned, or held but hoped for or perhaps remembered, not on the tongue, but when it isn’t there?

 

 

 

About the Poet:
Paul Hooker is a native Southerner, a Presbyterian minister, and a member of the faculty of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Raised in Nashville and Birmingham, he holds degrees from the University of Tennessee (BA), Union Presbyterian Seminary (DMin), and Emory University (PhD). He has served as pastor to congregations in Kingsport, TN and Atlanta, GA, and as an Executive Presbyter in Jacksonville, FL. In addition to writing poetry, he plays jazz bass guitar; both activities speak to his yearning l to create beauty. He is a husband, father, and grandfather.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

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