‘Elusive Illusive Art’ and Other Poetry by Mike Ruskovich

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Elusive Illusive Art

Where are the pure, illusive works of art
that bubble upward from the deep unknown?
Where in this world are worlds Art sets apart?

Duct tape? A banana fresh from the cart?
Renoir would recoil and Monet would moan.
Where are the pure, illusive works of art?

A gallery is now a shopping mart,
and museums are artifice on loan.
Where in this world are worlds Art sets apart,

where being clever is not being smart,
and wonder is created, not just grown?
Where are the pure, illusive works of art

for which the bidding cannot really start,
since their value’s more than investors own?
Where in this world are worlds Art sets apart

with skill and will and hands that hold the heart?
Where is the piece whose worth is off the chart?
Where are the pure, illusive works of art?
Where in this world are worlds Art sets apart?

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By the Wye

Wordsworth by the Wye knew why
__The river flows both ways;
With a poet’s hungry mind and eye
__He devoured those thoughtful days
Spent with his sister or alone
__In the emerald shade of trees,
By the abbey ruins of tumbled stone,
And in the fresh wide-open breeze.

I too have toured that lovely place
__And watched that river flow,
Met Wordsworth’s moments face-to-face
__And also tried to know
What there is to know of life.
I was not with my sister, though;
__I was with my wife,
Lost in the present of long ago.

His words were worth so much to me
__In my youthful hours of despair
That I vowed I would someday be
__Walking with the poet there,
Watching the Wye flow out to sea
And then returning with the tide,
Free-flowing and yet never free
__Of the currents we all must ride.

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Mike Ruskovich lives in Grangeville, Idaho. He taught high school English for thirty-six years. He and his wife have four children.