STAN WHITE

"self portrait"
by Stan White

Images & poetry copyright Stan White.

Stan White is a photographer who has had a lifelong interest in three-dimensional imaging. His images are derived from original stereographs. He has written non-fiction all his life and more recently poetry and short stories. He has published two books of poetry, has been published in anthologies and in the literary press. He is retired with his wife in Brantford. Stan is one of the three judges for The 2007 Silver Hammer Award/Anthology.


SONNET TO ADOLESCENCE

The age that wakes the woman in the girl
Turns his spring’s fancy leaves to golden
Summers fall and winter’s time, beholden
To that sweet stammer, dance and whirl
Of youth, of awkward puberty, with talk
Of all the sonnets’ provenance to prove.
Shy talk before the ease of later love,
Boy bewitched by comma-curves and curl,
Girl boy-bedevilled by un-girlishness.
Each to each inclined before they knew
The wolf that drives the ram and tames the ewe,
Yet nothing gave except the time of day.
Fumble, all he can remember, fumble.
She, his lame attempts, propensity to mumble.















"country walk"
by Stan White


IN A TRAMP'S TIME

Rain, rain and on the rain’s
sad-sodden moor
he breathes the breath of clouds.
and in the weathers’ raw

and watered mouth
sighed bacon-sizzle sound
of day-drool day,
wringing its metaphor

in tears from summer
writing winter’s rain.
As this Northumberland’s
December draws

unsheltered miles;
not ditch nor even hedge
not hint of time
of any century, for sure,

from out the drizzle day’s
mist-mizzle night,
he falters on the oddments
of the Roman wall

turns west for Banna,
makes for Birdoswald
- warmth, the hostel line
and sweet furmety.


THE BLUE NIGHT LEAVING

Five is the hour
for the want of silence;

where the baritone bullfrog,
at the hint of light,
lows, “no… no… no.”

and over the wood, in scissor’d song,
a hundred birds in a frenzy guess
at the prodigal sun’s return

and the indeterminate sounds
of the preyed and the preying
have left in the play of night

and undisturbed,
in customary themes,
the poet dreams,
wasting another dawn
for the want of words.


BLACK CAT

The spinning coin’s temptation
- tail or head,
impotent upon a preference left unsaid.
Wanting, is prerequisite to chance;
Need, the primal mover of its dance.
Man’s friend, foe or familiar.
Yet he deems
an awesome power
upon this arbiter of dreams.


WORDS OF TREES

Out of the intricacies of seed,
as laughter, convolutions rive
through rough bark bruise and scrape
the god of oak, the first noel of yew,
the swing and easy bend
of wind-wave willows
sip the nectarine of dreams
and so the hands of fingers walk the sky
a parody of downfall trial and ring of year
a rising nature from the soft earth to the sun
all in the patience of a stand-still time.














"Hummer at Gloxinia"
by Stan White