A Father’s Gift, a Son’s

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 4 Comments

A Father’s Gift, a Son’s

You’ve been on my mind
this past year, every year
for more than thirty.
Heavy at first, with guilt
over time not spent with you
until near the end, when it was
too late, that weight eased when
weighed against the good times,
so many good times
that I spent the last year
writing them down.
Memories going back,
from my childhood and on
through my first four decades,
your smile seldom absent
in any of them, present
even now, decades later,
when I look in the mirror,
a gift that any father
would be proud to give.
And if you were still here,
my gift to you would be
the poems that tell that story
in pages bound with love.

This is my response to Day Twelve, (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), where Maureen asks us to write a poem “that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.”

My latest poetry collection, “The Long Haul”, is about my relationship with my father, with our health as a common thread, and is forthcoming in the next couple of weeks.

synthetic pressure ~ senryū

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 2 Comments

synthetic pressure

taxes registered details

uneven alignment

~~~~~~~~~~~

                       synthetic

      pressure

           taxes

                                            registered

                         details

                       uneven

      alignment

This is my response to Day Eleven, (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), where Maureen asks us to write an erasure/blackout poem. “You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you. Feel free to maintain the whitespace of the original text (as is traditional for erasures/).” I’ve used an auto dealership service ad to write a senryū.

No Going Back

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / Leave a comment

No Going Back

Being there means you leave your mark,
but being gone leaves everything to conjecture.
Satellite view doesn’t tell the whole story,
when decades pass and nothing stays the same.

When does it end?
It never will, because you’ll never come back.
When does it end?
It never will, because you’ll always be here.

Life intervenes, and everything changes.
Life ends, and change means everything.
A favorite place becomes no place special
when there’s no going back.

This is my response to Day Ten, (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026). Maureen offers Geoffrey Brock’s poem, “Goodbye,” which “describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue.” She asks that we write our own “meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.”

The trees clustered around the house in the photo (click to view) were saplings when planted by my father more than 40 years ago. Within seven years he was gone, but the trees live on.

Megan

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 4 Comments

Megan

There is nothing so sleek
as patches of white within black
that become flowing lines as she races
here, there, sheep zigging, zagging
their way across the pasture,
or tennis ball fleeing
her indomitable spirit,
while her feet flick to trace
the relentless course of
this border collie’s dreams.

This is my response to Day Nine (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), the prompt at NaPoWriMo.net in which we’re asked to write a poem “in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts.” The sheep not so much, but the tennis ball definitely was a part of Megan’s history. We miss her. Megan was a part of my poetry for many years.

Leave No Trace ~ with audio

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 21 Comments

Leave No Trace

There is a bottom to this valley,
even for a river as small as this.
Bluffs on either side, but never together,
so that fertile land lies to one side or another.
The ages have swept through here,
worn rock and soil, rested for a while
in those fields before moving on.

I pause within narrow confines,
of little matter to all that has passed,
yet aware of the present before me.
Fully in shade, my kayak tucked beneath
a rock overhang, I gaze into sunlight
as I watch the aerial dance of swallows,
a frenzied motion of order.

Overhead, I hear a rustle within
nests tucked into pockets in the rock.
A swallow appears, inspects my presence,
then flies out to join the feeding dance.
The scree of a hawk wheeling overhead
is ignored by turtles that sun on a log.
A blue jay calls out, as if in answer.

I brush my fingers along that stone ceiling,
feel as if an integral part of this scene,
if only for a moment, then paddle
into the sunlight, leaving no trace other than
my wake and the splash of startled turtles,
knowing the marks we leave on this world
far outweigh any I’ve just witnessed.

“One Direction” originally was featured by Vita Brevis.
It also appears in my poetry collection, Heron Spirit.

Shared with Open Link Night #405 at dVerse Poets Pub.

 

The Essence of Writing

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 2 Comments

The Essence of Writing

I write of nature’s waters
as if I were still there,
too late to capture
their living essence.
The waters of Watkins Glen
carve hundreds of feet
to create a narrow gorge,
a shale canvas
of thousands of years.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
on the shore of Grand Island,
fishing rod in hand, a young boy
sits beside his father
in the dawn’s earliest light,
feels a nibble as his pole bends.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
I feel the mighty roar
in the splendor of
Niagara Falls,
walk beside the beauty
of the rapids within its gorge.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
I sit on the banks of
the Niagara River,
watch a great blue heron,
motionless among reeds,
as kites fly overhead.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
I spy barracuda along
the edge of Palancar Wall,
pass morays at Paradiso Reef,
swim beside Bonaire’s
loggerheads at Boka Slagbaai.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
a seven-foot sturgeon
swims beside me
on a river drift
along the rocky bottom
of the mighty Niagara.

Too late to capture
their living essence,
shaded by sycamore and oak,
sitting silently with my paddle
lying across my kayak,
I watch a green heron watch
its prey, its meal soon in its grasp.

I write of nature’s waters
as if I were still there,
too late to capture
their living essence.
I write of these moments
days, sometimes years, later,
with no guarantee that my efforts
will be able to capture
their true essence.

This is my response to Day Eight (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), the prompt at NaPoWriMo.net in which we’re asked to “use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.”

A Reasonable Request

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 26 Comments

A Reasonable Request

Let loose the dogs.
Not of war, but of reason.
Seek pups, not hounds,
to stir within you
compassion,
not some irrational need
to divert attention
from your flaws,
a suspension of
belief in the truth
to assert control
when you have lost
all sense of reason.

This is my response to Poetics: Imperatively Yours, the prompt from Dora at dVerse ~ Poets Pub that asks us to write a poem with “at least one line in the imperative mood.”

Still off prompt for Day Seven of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026.
But hey, two poems in one day.

Hollow Space

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 3 Comments

Hollow Space

Ravenous for discomfort,
I walk on broken glass
red with the shame of
knowing I’ve lurked
in this hollow space
too long, rattled by
the empty feeling that
calm is only a flicker
found in the darkness
that surrounds me,
one slip away from
the impending crash.

This is my response to Wordle 751 at the Sunday Whirl.

rattled | space | red | crash | lurked | slip | flicker | ravenous | found | shame | glass | hollow

Off prompt for Day Seven of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026.

Bone Dead ~ quadrille

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 27 Comments

Bone Dead

With looks to match
its Super Sport badge,
that ’64 Impala was beautiful,
but its gold metalflake finish
belied what lay beneath.

The bones were there, but
its original owner’s abuse
meant it would succumb
within the year.
What a beautiful year it was.

(My second car, bought for $200 in 1971, was a 1964 Chevy Impala SS.)

This is my response to Quadrille #245 – Writing Down the Bones, the prompt from De Jackson at dVerse Poets Pub that asks us to use a form of the word bone in a 44-word poem (excluding title), with no required meter or rhyme.

Off prompt for Day 6 of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026.

Image source: hotcars.com & goodspeed.com

Every Which Way

/ Ken Gierke / rivrvlogr / 14 Comments

Every Which Way

I hate doors.
And walls.
They take advantage of
my nearsightedness
and that spatial
disorientation
that’s plagued me
since I was laid up
with an ear infection.
If lintels aren’t tripping me,
I’m walking into door frames.
Wall corners?
They come out of nowhere.
And beds. Fall out of one,
and you’ll see what I mean.
Don’t get me started on floors.

This is my response to Day Five, (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), the prompt at NaPoWriMo.net that asks us to “write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.”