Catching Winds North
Poems
by
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All In The Hands Eyes reveal only half the story. Behind the initial gleam and dance, Follow bent-neck glances, Eye blinking And looks perpendicular to words. There, a curtain waits to be drawn. A deeper tale lies in the hands, Bent and rounded in width, Leathered by an eon’s worth of summers. From gnarled knuckle roots, Tuberous fingers form an unvoiced arc. An epic lies in fissured palms. A life’s rooting for peanuts, Bagging cotton, And slashing sugarcane, Wrote these stanzas of presence and deed. Clenched tight about the throat of a shovel, Burned by sail-runs of rope, Laid raw by a washboard’s rasping, Mottled by bedbug’s midnight gnawing, And scorpion stings, A life’s tale, Undisclosed by the eyes, But revealed In the hands, Waits to be spoken. Cartagena de Indias, Colombia 1973
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About the Book
Walks Fallen leaves’ Sweet decay Ferments this morning. Like lovers clinging To memories of lost summer heat, They curl tightly into one another, Dreading their wintry farewell. Sound Beach November 2015 Touched by the scent of burning corn stalks and pumpkins ripening in the sun, February winds off the Long Island Sound, and midnight ferry runs out of the harbor, Robert Hodum in Catching Winds North celebrates life’s bewilderments and delicious moments. Hodum’s poetry spans nearly fifty years of creative expression that shares lyrical tales inspired by life’s rogue breezes. Selections written during his life in Colombia speak of the mystery and complexities of this Latin American country. Included are poems inspired by his mission trips to Nicaragua that celebrate its people and their folklore.
About the Author
Robert Hodum attended Stony Brook University in New York and the University of Bolivariana and the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. He completed his graduate work at Stony Brook University, specializing in Latin American history and Ibero-American culture and civilization. He is the author of two other books and currently resides on Long Island, New York, where he enjoys walking the bluffs and beaches, and kayaking the waters of the Sound.