‘To Once Have Been Immortal’ and Other Poetry by Paul Buchheit

To Once Have Been Immortal

A mountain swollen with the impudence
of jaunty youth, unfazed by plodding Time,
aspires to lofty realms of Providence
as blight and battle interrupt the rhyme
of living Earth. And that was I, a life
ago, oblivious to wisdom, drowned
by notions of a timeless grandeur rife
with dash and derring-do amidst the sound
of trumpets, rising up triumphantly,
a virgin peak above the bristlecone.
But now, with flesh and spirit withery
and aching, I forsake my lofty throne
and crumble like the quaking, fractured ground
from which I wakened, and to which I’m bound.

Where You Sang To Me

The brooding waves are slapping, lashing, lathering
the oily stubble on the seawall, mossy green
and slick and sinuous, like serpents gathering
from secretive Plutonic depths in some obscene
conspiracy of caterwauling predators
regaling in the devious simplicity
of their disguise. And this is where the troubadours
were lured to you, before a curtain silvery,
a stage of ocean tide. They gazed in ecstasy
upon your face, a white celestial ornament.
Their reeds and mandolins were raised in quivery
appeals to steal away your silken instrument.

But now you’re gone. And now a brackish probing tongue
consumes the rocky sweetness where your words were sung.

Paul Buchheit is an author of books, poems, progressive essays, and scientific journal articles. He recently completed his first historical novel, 1871: Rivers on Fire.  His poetry has appeared in The Lyric, Illinois State Poetry Society, Poets & Patrons of Chicagoland, Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, Society of Classical Poets, and other publications.