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Best Poems Written by John Oldham

Below are the all-time best John Oldham poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Hawk

On this mountaintop I sit
In solitude reclined –

For such a heightened lift
Soul-weary did I climb
The world foresworn – a bit
(My aching heart inclined)

A flowing form of art
A hawk goes soaring by
In curving – graceful – arc
Suspended in the sky

It liberates my heart
And with the hawk I fly
Heart to beating heart 
Eye to seeing eye

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Hounds of Yesterday

There’s a howling in the air tonight
A baying at the moon
For the hound is running free again
And his voice has joined the tune
Of a thousand other voices
That echo through the years
And a certain blue-tick calling
– She’s calling through my tears

They’re in the backwoods running now
Like in a younger age
Baying on the trail with joy
As they did just yesterday
With their feet, like wings, a'flying
As they gulp the happy air
Wild-eyed little maniacs
Without a worldly care!

Do you hear them now, my darling?
Do you see them in the fields
The sun upon their shadows, the wind
Blowing through their ears?
As you know you’ll always see them
And hear them from afar
Romping through the atmosphere
From star to shining star

Now they pause in listening silence
As if they seem to sense
The presence of our memories
In the near but distant past –
For their memories, as such they keep
Are as near as mine today
Which holds them still, while still I weep
For my hounds of yesterday –

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The Rose

He saw the rose
And all around the rose an aura glowed
Enveloping the rose, as if
It was the rose itself 
That glowed

And when the breezes blew
The rose, and aura, moved
As one – with grace and ease
And beauty, such as that he thought he’d never see

There was no love within his heart
That day, nor none he held apart,
Nor beauty much to be desired
To set his raging soul afire

Yet something there about the glow 
Which held him, lo – 
The splendid aura of the rose
Arrested all his thought
And made him doubt
All that he thought, and thought about – 

And then he started to,
As one who long ago had died 
Sudden springing back to life, alive!

For what he saw without reproof
Was nothing but the true unyielding truth –
‘Twas not the aura set apart
Enveloping the rose with outer glow,
But an inner flame within the rose
That burned – that burned! – 
Out of which both rose and aura glowed –

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Sunflower

The sunflower stretched
With its stalk and its neck
As far to the sky
As it could – reaching high,
Pushing its golden face
With clumsy, awkward grace

Trying, with all its might
To reach the highest height
That it could ever muster
So it could be like Custer
Or like a grand ole redwood
(I think it thought it could)

It reached into the atmosphere
Inhaled the biting air
Looked about in wonderment
High above the firmament

But slender was its frame
It did not have the strength
To stand as so unaided –
It weakened, and degraded

It towered, then bent over,
It leaned a little lower
And found the earth up close
Had just as much to boast
As did the open sky
It wondered at up high –

And thereto did it stay
Forever and a day
A little bit hung over
As if it lost its lover

Or better yet, had found
Upon the hallowed ground
Some cosmic explanation
About its situation
Which held it in its thrall
High above it all

And made its hanging there
That much easier to bear –

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Journey

They spoke in a singular language
A language none but they could know
She with the moonlight in her eye
He with the hush of fallen snow

They moved with a slow beginning
By the light of the rising moon
In the night on the white of the snow
To the sound of an ancient tune

They hummed alone – And they carried
About themselves a certain weight
That some might possibly dismiss
As being neither small nor great

And yet to them, these two, on the move
With unstated purpose pressing
Upon their steps, each weary step
A symbol of their load un-lessened

Bore witness to their anxious plight – 
And wherefore did they travel, and what from
That required they steal silently
Across the tundra on the run?

Was it a secret they alone
Could share, and with none other
But the moon and the shifting snow
And the misty night for cover?

Of this they spoke in muted silence
In a language only they could know
She with the moonlight in her eye
He with the hush of fallen snow

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Ricochet

The bird in the tree
Singing so beautifully!
Does not sing for me

And yet, as witness
There’s no doubt I benefit
And am doubly blessed

By the notes that play
In delightful ricochet
I deflect your way!

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A Little Moon For Benjamin

A little moon for Benjamin
For Benjamin the moon
Which casts itself upon his face
Tonight when it is full 
In a magic transformation
That illuminates, in depth
A purer form of innocence
A finer state of grace
And wisdom’s inspiration
That poets can embrace

For here the gaze of wonder!
For here the look of awe!
For here the eyes enraptured
By what they see afar

And uttering but these few words
In a simple, boundless phrase
“The moon, the moon”, in rapt exclaim
Is all he needs to say – 

For nothing brighter shines tonight
Than the moon that shines beyond
Except the eyes of Benjamin
For whom the moon belongs –

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Before The Day Turned Into Night

Before the day turned into night
The shadows danced and stalked the light
The moon withheld, stayed out of sight
Then took its lone, nocturnal flight

Beyond horizons studded stars
Came into view above, afar –
They slowly crept from reaches far –
I thought to meet them where they are,

But they are of the night, not day
And are remote and far away
And like so many things today
They dwell in darkness, where they stay,

Elusive in their cosmic light
As day turns slowly into night –

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Pemigewasset Wilderness

We stitched our ribbons through your heart
From end to end we threaded
We sewed right to your fingertips
– And every stitch you dreaded

We tramped along your shoulders broad
To weave our little lines –
How nimble were our fingers then
How clever our design!
 
We jabbed and pierced and buttoned you
We pulled the stitches tight –
For us an act of liberty
For you an act of night

We gaze now on our handiwork
As on a work of art
A wilderness of emerald
Mapped out upon a chart

But, ‘lest we think we’ve mastered you
Once every little while
You raise yourself and startle us
With lightning in your smile!

Details | John Oldham Poem

Snow White

Now it is white here
All white
And the moon full blue is bright
And the town so silent –
So silent night in silence sleeps
Where the snow has fallen
Fallen white it sleeps
In the drowsy comfort of its sweep
Like the pillow soft on which you lie
Asleep in dreams
The silent night in silence keeps