I hope you’re enjoying these entries of Poetry on the Move poems and the personal way each interprets the contest theme, “Invention.”
If you care to leave a comment, I know the poets would love hearing from you. Thanks for reading along~I’ll be posting these poems through the end of April, National Poetry Month, so stay tuned.
Poetry on the Move is a project of the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate. All poems remain the property of the authors.
Sally Ashton
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate
* * *
Can you put it in motion without it?
found
launch
start
Can you act on it without it?
spirit
catapult
aim
Can you want it without knowing you want it?
ambition
fly
spark
Can you find it if you don’t don’t look for it?
innovation
focus
spotlight
Ruth Pangilinan
Cupertino
* * *
Here, In the Valley
Give us a spot, unfettered.
A space for breathing, where the gears sing,
and static invigorates the skin,
where one craves the taste of metal on the tongue.
Where even in the tenuous bloom of exhaustion
the potential vibrates,
until molecules crash into being.
Birthed out of the synapse air.
Mary Pascual
San Jose
* * *
Silicon Valley Crop Version 2012
Rivers of asphalt
Flow past orchards of buildings,
Where chip designs bloom.
Michael Pelizzari
Sunnyvale
* * *
Oldman Coyote and Grandmother Spider say
Those who promote that they’re always wise
why believe such lies?
Meanwhile, we’ll continue to find new ways
to live, travelers from sea to mountain
and in your garden
as you travel in ours.
Consider this, that your question
and answer are the same,
a reinvented recipe for sweetening pain.
Robert Pesich
Sunnyvale
* * *
Techie Daughter
I handed her a bag of broken glass
and said, “A stained glass window is the hope.”
She winked and worked and thought and on and then—
Voilà! My own online kaleidoscope.
Palmer Pinney
Palo Alto
* * *
Wherefore
My Aunt Necessie
Is the mother of Invention.
I asked her once why she named
Her son Invention. She said
She didn’t really have a choice,
Especially here in this Valley
Where technology grows its
Apps faster than cherries.
Want to see her garage?
It’s a museum now.
Dennis Richardson
San Jose
* * *
At the Crossroads:
37° N / 122° W
I am a fancymonger.
Who are you?
Are you a fancymonger, too?
Ah, there’s a club for us.
Come along.
If you dream in What-If
and speak in Why-Not.
If you fashion Never-Before
out of Never-Could.
You belong.
Come along.
Christine Richardson
San Jose
* * *
King of the Hill
Competitors across the choppy seas
ready to stomp you down
But you raise yourself from the sodden ground
Young minds
New ideas
Lifting you higher still
Innovation keeps you
King of the Hill
George Rinaldi
Sunnyvale
* * *
Gems in the Valley
Inventions pop from
a matrix of failures,
gleaming like garnets.
David Ring
Palo Alto
* * *
Sight
Tonight, I stare outside, seeing.
Straining through the haze, through the dark.
I blink, and the haze disappears.
The darkness vanishes. And now I can see.
Enlightenment dawns precariously upon the clearing dusk.
Now, It has no doubt, as it envelops the world.
Because there is always more to see.
Manasa Sanka
Cupertino
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Blog 