‘Unexpiring’ and Other Poetry by Neal Dachstadter

Unexpiring

Ekphrastic on the above photo

Unexpiring constant Sun,
Earth untired responding spun,
Surging fire, maternal birth,
Urgent sire of vernal mirth.

Père Sol, of ruth and blaze,
Mère Earth of falling gaze.

Ruth: Hebrew for mercy
Père: French for father
Mère: French for mother

Longhorn Swath

Photo by Preston Lewis, Ft Griffin Fandangle, Albany, Texas

The Handsome Angus, Hereford Gent,
And deftly crafted breeds were meant
For gentle dell and verdant land,
Where thick’s the grass and poised the stand.

Posing stately, ‘side a stream,
Brown and Black with comely gleam,
Removed from wolf or coyote band,
For horn be short and won’t expand.

Less than long, amid the toss,
Twitching neck but brooking loss,
Upon the plain and looking grand?
On open range, or prairie span.

Not so, their lanky cousin, cuss,
Wide of swath, without a fuss,
Gliding slow and lithe to man,
And hold the frontier being hand-

y with this hardy 5 foot swath.
Clever Coyote: do your math.
Hungry Wolf, should you demand
A steak tonight?  Some other brand

Might mark your efforts better spent;
Than on the Longhorn, quick as flint,
To toss y’ through the air, no dand-
y beast is he, no boring, bland,

Or fragile sort, who lacked a plan,
But horn – ed wide, since time began.

Neal Dachstadter is a poet living in Tennessee.  His work has been printed in Decanto Poetry Magazine (UK), Western Viewpoints and Poetic Images: the Great American West (Woodinville, Washington), Society of Classical Poets Journal 2015 (Mt Hope, New York), Rocky Point Times (Puerto Peñasco, Mexico) and The Lyric (Jericho, Vermont).  A member of the Demosthenian Literary Society at the University of Georgia, he deployed to Hawija, then wrote on Lookout Mountain, continuing with Delta Kappa Epsilon International.  Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Athens encouraged him as a writer.  In 2015 he wrote in Arizona at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument five miles north of Mexico.

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