‘What Rumor, What Word?’ and Other Poetry by Neal Dachstadter

What Rumor, What Word?

On the featured photo above

What rumor, what word, O Cloud from the sea?
Cumulus, Nimbus: what sayest thou to me?
But human and man; the simplest I be,

And found ruminating, mine interest would thee,
O quench, with thy speech, and earnest me tell,
Unclench thou, and teach, and learn me, to quell.

Resourceful

Sail to bend and sand to blast
Gale and wind of sea so fast
Mill unceasing, turn and spin
Skillful, peaceful, churn within.

Dutch resourceful; making do
Much of recourse owe we you.

Photo by Luke Vander Linden

Genghis, Redux

Upon the plain there rode a wolf
He did not know at first; himself
was all he thought he’d ever be
Not Khan of Mongols, Wild and Free

Photo by Kristov Paulus / Mongolia, West of Ulaanbaatar, the Tuul River of Khan Khentii, where Genghis Khan is buried

“Once, and Young”

Beyond the green and waving wheat,
When gone the blue and waving sheen,
Before the golden times would draw,
The old were young, siècle fin.

-fin du siècle is French for end of the century, end of a cycle
-In reference to We Were Soldiers Once, and Young by General Harold Moore and Journalist Joe Galloway

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.

Trending now: