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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2023
Best friends, poems by Ray Whitaker.
Best friends
Wanting to be softer I’m trying to say
in ways I have only imagined
in ways or methods that I don’t think about
needing, wanting, desiring the propagation
there are friends of mine
that only acknowledges to it a softness
privately some of them I have
never seen that way
their circles might be red
perhaps grey or blue
even pink
a mystery remaining hidden
yet I move my circle
that has no beginning or end to it
like green grass spiraling
that is in a meadow with a stream, after a rain.
When toys were taken seriously
Part of the mystery and joy of the season
was my sister who seemed to place
the Christmas tree balls intently
even now, she looks like she did
a memory of when she was twelve
and I was almost six.
Today she is the prime mover
about the Christmas Tree decorations
the Moravian star atop, the strung lights
the festive wooden nutcrackers on the mantle
those things come almost with her holiday intent
making things happy, all of us know this
and count on her
caring for that
as if
there is, or was
no one else
that could do it as well.
She is twelve again, and I am almost six
in those moments. remembering
wholly impatient for presents to open
being grateful
for who she was
and who
she has become.
On the desk
The mousepad lying there brings possibilities
it asks for attention
for possibly going to the end of the internet
and having a departure into determination
the white mouse seems to have a life of it’s own
accepting the click only on empowerment
that adds to my totality.
What is there when I move the mouse
this interplay with consciousness and mechanics
somewhere there is a river flowing
in all of it
carrying the signals from my hand muscle’s neurons.
It is a tributary
to what
questions are here
that I have
towards what makes me whole.
© Ray Whitaker
Ray Whitaker has been writing both prose and poetry since he was seventeen. What Ray is writing now is very different from what he wrote those so many years ago. All writers and poets are writing out of “the Self” however there are directions that the self speaks into, that change. Now Ray’s writing is to put foremost in his work, just who he is writing for. He intends on writing for the everyday man and woman. He firmly believes that poems need to reach into the everyday person’s pictures in their minds and engage with those. This is where he aims to make a difference in his creative writing. He’s fulfilled when he sees that his work is provoking thought in his readers.