Stanley M. Noah is Full of Crow’s Featured Poet for September. In line with old traditions, Stanley sent his poems my way via carrier pigeon. It was a treat to experience his rich visual images and textured voice on paper….real paper. Stanley’s work delves in somber meanderings of the heart that feel crisp like an autumn morning. His words provide an internal place to ponder how lucky you are in this lifetime. It is my humble honor to present to you four wonderful poems by Stanley M. Noah.
Aleathia Drehmer, Poetry Editor
Far From Home In Time And Place
Stanley M. Noah, September Featured Poet, 2009
Late evenings
we often spent ourselves on the front porch
in the white swing—onward swinging.
And would
say hi to those walking by, and waving
to cars speeding by as if before
a wreck
to tell us their goodbyes; and
onward swinging we watched
the sun
making hay in the blue fields,
the magical color of sugar beets,
and patterns
of dust-brown sparrows looking up for
redtail hawks, looking down for green grain.
But soon
all shadows had begun to grow
thin and taller as they walked away
into another
pink horizon. Quickly it was time to
wash up, take away one barnyard rooster,
make supper,
rice with red beans. And onward into
midnight we would listen to radio dreams.
Full Moon Through My Window and Across
Stanley M. Noah, September Featured Poet, 2009
It’s the grayness of perfection on white like in
film noir. A wall, a floor of shadows expressing
edges of realities, hidden. Yet, a visual still-stone
forms a haunting. Nothing feels to be moving except
silence in a vacuum. It’s the hour when the ground
releases heat absorbed during a long summer’s day.
My cigarette smoke rises like a burning cinnamon
stick from here to the lamp and joins a moth. And
from my window I can see how the moon got here
and the stars are still trying to find their way. My
tilted cat sleeping on the slanted roof hopes to be a
human someday if the landscape will have her. Not
far away I can hear a sliver of cars migrating. I can
hear my next door friend playing a piano sonata by
Brahms; and hear and see things Brahms never could—
all of this: the sensuous aroma of the hour, the past
and the present running toward each other as if trying
to catch up with the future.
Steep Cliffs
Stanley M. Noah, September Featured Poet, 2009
I have fallen
short of myself.
Not in perception of,
or conception, nor invention
of putting together
a cultured life
with meaningful endings.
But rather
it has been blinding technicalities
that tilt me far downward,
tripping me up, until
all that’s left
are piles of causations:
those false ideas dancing
from my aching mouth
like blue mist and confetti.
Any Beach Is A Meandering Place
Stanley M. Noah, September Featured Poet, 2009
You said
stand there and look in all
directions. You shall see the
inventory of your existence,
naked in the white ink line
where mind finds a leisure space,
something like a self-rescue you
thought could never happen.
You said
listen and you shall hear all
voices and sounds ever made
throughout nature and human
history. It will not overwhelm
but overlap you.
You said
take in all the air into your lungs
and you shall know the far ends
and depth of our universe. But
only for a second and that will be
enough.
You said
come to the beach at night and maybe
you shall learn secrets of knowledge
hidden from you during another day.
You will discover the extension of
your imagination.
You said
gently walk the beach, stop, look back
and you shall know the early maps
humanity traveled. Now the beach and
you are like close friends collecting sea
shells.
You said
hold sand in your hand and you shall
recognize the weight of your own life
within the world, alone, as this is the
complexity that got your importance here.
Stanley M. Noah has a BGS degree from The University of Texas at Dallas. He has been published in Poesy, Old Red Kimono, Nexus, Poetry Nottingham, Main Street Rag, Iota, The South Carolina Review, Art Times, Eclectica.org and other publications in the U.S.A., Britain, Canada, New Zealand and India. He was the winner of The Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest’s humorous category in 2006. He spends much of his time watching old movies and visiting neon cafes late into the night drinking gallons of coffee.
