My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.
Author: Cantelon
I am a word carver by profession...i get paid to write. Just read the blog...
September 3, 2025 – hope
Hope is a presence at dawn
Shining like the sun’s first light
It’s a tender voice spilled as water
Across a dry patched landscape
And drunk down by greedy life
It’s words sent like lifeboats
Unsought but delivered nonetheless
Hope is a face in silhouette
Framed by the glow of gold
And wishing you well at daybreak
Hope is a small kiss goodbye
Hope is a small kiss hello
September 2, 2025 – the quiet
Sometimes the quiet
Is the end of conflict
The peaceful exhale
After the crazed
After the storm
Sometimes…
September 1, 2025 – cities
i see Lisbon on my right
and am reminded of the cities of the world
that have suffered my feet
to tread awestruck down the street
there is Rome and Milan and Pisa and Florence
the villa at Vicopisano
boating on the lake by Lugano
there is London and Oxford
there far away is Tokyo
remember Auckland
remember Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne
days in Geneva hunting Indian food
Grenoble, Munich and Zurich fly by
while Amsterdam waits for us to land
i see a lighthouse on the edge of Reykjavik
i see the beach at Ipanema in Rio
and dancing until 4 am in Sao Paulo
drinking cusco sours all night in Lima
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles
Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Miami
so many more…
it almost blurs together
one great and beautiful busyness
what a world
what dumb luck
to have seen so much of it
to know my shadow
has stretched across their walls
August 31, 2025 – August
The month is ended
August has come and gone
Like the flash of light
Glinting off the windshield
Of a passing car
Speeding away
Out of sight
Like it never was
A faded memory
Lost.
Homes
Aren’t we all
Homes with stone walls
Closed windows
Locked doors
We let people in
Or they break in
Or they give up
Or they were never there
Pictures
I was looking at pictures
Of this guy I never knew
But somehow he’s a part of me
And I tried to feel something
Because you’re supposed to;
You try to fill things with meaning
You try to fill people with meaning
Sometimes it just doesn’t work
August 30, 2025 – what it feels like
Remember when it was
Past midnight
And the t.v. would play
The American national anthem
And it was dark outside
Past the point of long shadows
Then there would be the tone
And a test pattern
Until finally
Only the long hiss of static
And you wouldn’t shut it off
Because you wanted it to last
Just a little bit longer…
That’s what it feels like.
Egg
I am the shell of an egg
That has been hollowed out
And placed upon the railing
Of a 10th floor balcony
As a storm rises dark in the west
But if the wind is strong enough
It may carry me to quiet waters
Setting me softly on the surface
To drift away in silence.
B-sides: Vol. 5
This experiment that I have been undertaking in writing a poem everyday for a year seemed like an easy task when I first thought of it but there have been times when it has been a challenge.
Overall I have enjoyed the project and look forward to publishing the fruits of this effort as a fourth volume of poetry called Anno Vitae: MMXXV in 2026.
One of the cool and interesting byproducts of this year’s work so far is that writing a poem a day has been a little like hand cranking one of those old Russian cars to start it (Lada). It took a lot of effort and wasn’t pretty but it got the engine going.
For me that’s a little like what this effort has been. Forcing myself to write a poem a day was a little like hand crank starting my creative brain…it wasn’t pretty and it took effort but often the result was the creative engine started running.
What has resulted has been one of the most prolific years of poetry writing in my life. Note – quantity does not mean quality. I’m not overly fond of many of the efforts, but like an ugly child, it is out in the world now and I am proud of it.
What this means is that in the space of a year Anno Vitae will be a 365 page overly large volume of poetry that has instigated the creation of somewhere between 400-500 other poems.
With this being the case I have decided a fifth volume will follow Anno Vitae at some point and it will be called B-sides: Vol. 5. The concept of B-sides come from the era of musicians releasing music on small 45 rpm records. Each side typically held one song. Even though the point of the 45 was to release a single prospective hit it made sense to utilize both sides of the record and so a song less likely to be popular was added to the “B” side while the song most likely to be a hit was on the A-side.
Ironically I feel like many of my Anno Vitae poems feel like B-sides while the followup poems feel more polished. This is ok, good writing often includes a healthy dose of irony.
Anyhow every good collection deserves a title poem and so here is one for B-sides:
B-sides: Vol. 5
flip over that hit,
turn that well-known sound around
and you’ll find something different,
words never destined for ears;
and so they are naked,
and so they are unfraid,
like a crowd at an orgy
hidden away from prying eyes
being everything they wanted to be
in the absence of judgement
now sent suddenly
into the cold world,
angry at the betrayal,
but curious all the same
as they embrace the moment
in the sudden realization that
there is no life b-sides this one
so let it be lived
fully witnessed.
Harnessing Chaos 