"I've known rivers...my soul has grown deep like the rivers."* Langston Hughes
selah river is a writing website
of Daniel Eugene Wilcox, a poet,
writer, and general kickabout traveler of the world and the mind.
In this wide, deep stream of Living, in our inner lives, powerful poetic lines--
ones of discernment, justice, empathy, and mercy--
seek to counter the sorrow, harshness, and angst
that claim our present time, and so many yesterdays,
and uncertain tomorrows to come. We live into becoming--
Yes, travel rivers of the world
and rivers of the soul
and rivers of the mind.
Selah.
MAY 2021:
New poems
Flighting Surprise
In my morning mug
Cold milk, washed blue berries
Dark and delicious
Lay waiting for another swig
Wait; what’s that?
Adhering--a wispy white feather
--
Or more briefly:
flighting surprise
in my morning mug--
adhering to wet blue berries
a wispy white feather
--
humming attack
wearing my fiery red shirt
for Christmas, I open our
sliding glass door;
sudden jolt in front
of my startled face--
a flash of feathers hum-buzzes,
darts within inches of me;
but away it flits left
back to that flowering bush
along our fence--
me a reject
--
side of the road
gray shadowed mail box
overwhelmed green, red-purple
bloomed jungle wonder
--
Twilight: Crossing Shimmering Streams into Dusk and Stars
--
fall back to autumn
treetops blazing gold
with the last light of this day--
we lift our eyes
--Dan Wilcox
In the Light
--
January 2021:
Color Me Fiery Intense Red
As a kid, expressive, creative, rambunctious,
something of a wild card
long into adulthood
I loved vibrant Green--
for abundant life, for exuberant energy, vividly alive
for beauty like in colors, emerald or jade,
for the natural world from creek to patch of woods
behind our house on the edge of Adams village,
to verdant forest green glens of the Sierras, Sequoia and Yosemite
But--
then, suddenly, unexpectedly, without conscious why;
spontaneous, impulsively one day in middle life,
I awoke
not liking green anymore…
viewing green instead as dull, insipid,
sickening, repetitious, odd,
over-done, humdrum…
Color me fiery Red--riveting, intense, striking sparks of light
cardinal, crimson, scarlet burst into my eyes and consciousness
—passionate, dazzling, blazing, heated, different…
as in exploding firework sky rockets,
as pulsing red coals in a bonfire,
as an amazing psychedelic quilt by my sweetheart
like an Impressionistic painting, luminous in our house
to ruby red lava in Hawaii’s volcano, intense sunsets, and Utah’s red rock
Red forever
--Dan Wilcox
A Psalm of Late Life
Pessimist of my oldering years
Preyed upon by lamentable loss
I find no balmy psalms to lyre
But after discovered liars
Only this harp
of yawps and howls,
I pray for transcendence,
This my modern yelled holler
My psalm of life end's exit
Dance in this sorrowing starred night
--
bidingTimeabiding
bite my teeth on famous lines
a hole lot of fragmented shells;
hunger hollows within--
deepening abyss
of lost longing
lone-ranging, reigning the distance
of a round heartless night
of a round heart-last light
lane-ranging, raining the day-stance
of last longing
steepening a-bless
fulness hallows within--
a whole lot of fragranced shalls;
bide my heart on famous lines
--
September 2020:
a time for…
in the fall a time for springing
childhood,
festivals of Monet-splashed leaves
that my sister and I raked and piled high
in the deep ditch in front
and jumped down into,
and our large garden behind the parsonage
with pumpkins, melons, and withered corn rows...
and lightning bugs on the wane,
flashing on and off
full of fall...
--
August 2020:
bolder utah
utah boulders,
eye widening rock
pastels bold in harvest's sun--
basalt garden wonder
--
at the park's bat box
my grandson scooping up handfuls
of dust
and swinging it loose--
fogged clouds
lighted by sunshine
that disperse
back to cleated ground
--
--
gull wings
gull wings
lightly spraying over gray clod fields
6-year drought--
so 'irrigating'!
--
Experience the awe-widened beauty of the Columbia Gorge.
MORNING GLORY
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/2017/10/morning-glory.html
--
Want to be conundrummed? Live in the starbacked night?
Visit Clockwise Cat Poetry Magazine: Klox and Katz Ink Issue, for my two new poems:
conundrumming
Starbacked
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/59489337/klox-and-katz-ink
Check out a brief poem on summer gloom, a haiku at vox poetica:
http://voxpoetica.com/dripping-rain-drizzles/
Then leave sorrow and war and memory behind. Journey love and romance in "Moon River" at Poetry Pacific.
http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2015/02/2-poems-by-daniel-wilcox.html
Need a little bit of humor in the midst of so much human tragedy and political chaos?
Try "The Pullout Coyote" at the fine poetry magazine, vox poetica.
A true but funny poetic story of our encounter with a wild critter in Yosemite last year.
http://voxpoetica.com/pull-out-coyote/
-
For Daniel's previously published writing visit http://www.psalmsyawpshowls.com/
Also, check out his new speculative novel, The Feeling of the Earth.
Get caught up in the joys, trials, and tribulations of 3 alienologists who warp into our solar system in 1842.
They become deeply involved and a mutation occurs in the human species. Journey through the years with them to 2074!
Available now at Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, libraries, and Amazon.
Deal with the moving film over your eyes in "Film Over Our Eyes."
Is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a poem....?
Experience Hollywood's wild ire, the roller-coaster excess of youth,
growing up fundamentalist Baptist, all that rollicking rock crazy Oz of the 60's, and Life itself.
http://thecamelsaloon.blogspot.com/2013/11/film-over-our-eyes.html
There are 3 collections of Daniel's published poems,
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls,
Dark Energy
and selah river.
All 3 areavailable at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, and coffee shops.
For Daniel's speculative writing, futuristic poems and stories warp over to
http://lastthings.weebly.com/.
Other websites include http://buddingzin.weebly.com/
http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/
http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/
and
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/
Do a Google sleuth and find washed up pieces of his poetic driftwood on the vast shores of the Internet.
His wild lines have fallen to print in many magazines including vox poetica, Fish Food Magazine, Contemporary American Voices,
The Camel Saloon, Ascent Aspirations, Poetry Pacific, Dead Snakes, Paradise Review, The Mindful Word, Enhance Literary and Art Magazine, Knot Middle Eastern Literary Journal, Mouse Tales Press, Mad Swirl, Ancient Paths Literary Magazine, hotmetalpress.net, Front Porch Review, The Greensilk Journal, Bigger Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry, Eunoia Review, The New Verse News, Decades Review, Quill and Parchment, Poydras Review, Counterexample Poetics, The Copperfield Review, Rubber Lemon, amphibi.us, Poetry Super Highway, Three Line Poetry, The Clockwise Cat, Liturgical Credo, Willows Wept Review, vox poetica, Structo Magazine #4, Four and Twenty, Gloom Cupboard, Clutching at Straws, The Centrifugal Eye, Wild Violet Literary Magazine, Lyrical Passion Poetry, A Handful of Stones, Haiku Journal, Right Hand Pointing, The Bicycle Review, Leaf Garden, The Recusant, Calliope Nerve, Static Movement, Unfettered Verse, outwardlink.net, protestpoems.org, Word Riot,
and
Moria Poetry, MediaVirus Magazine, Lunarosity, Hanging Moss Journal, The New Verse News, ocean diamond, The Writer's Eye, Mad Swirl, Abandoned Towers, Writer's Ink, The Scruffy Dog Review, Oak Bend Review, Crossing Rivers Into Twilight, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Cherry Blossom Review, Word Catalyst, The Houston Literary Review, Lucid Rhythms, Identity Theory, Halfway Down the Stairs, Frame Lines, Full of Crow, The Externalist, The Driftwood Review, Western Friend Magazine, Flutter Poetry Journal, Frostwriting, Words-Myth, Ink Sweat & Tears, Erbacce Print Journal, Sentinel Poetry Online, The November 3rd Club, the poetry warrior, The Shine Journal, Mississippi Crow Magazine, The Cerebral Catalyst, Anthrozine, Ink, Sweat, & Tears, Stylus Poetry Journal, Idlewheel Literary Friction, The Indite Circle, The Rogue Poetry Journal, The WriteSideUp, La Fenetre International Literary Magazine,The Other Side Magazine, Gambit, etc.
Photograph C by Betsy Wilcox
