Welcome to Native Star
Author Stan Renfro has been in the news
of late. Check him out in this video
(he appears about 2 minutes into the clip).
You can also check him out on The Journey
Home Radio Show with Diego Mulligan
For your reading pleasure, here are some
new poems by Stan Renfro. Samples from
Native Star are also playing at the bottom of this page.
Jemez Overlook
The day you left I went back on top.
A beautiful flower was blooming, two thin
anthers bending from a blue corolla.
Currants remained on the bush you ate from,
pale red, some nearly purple. A hummingbird
browsed by and I broke more spiderwebs
to find the water we left gone.
Your shriveled sage strands, however,
made a double helix in the rock indention
surrounded by the cloudy void.
I imagined porpoise to the west, buffalo
to the east, white owls over the north
and a tortoise trail south.
A hawk or eagle shrieked from distant pines below
as morning sunlight banked across the canyons.
Then actually a rock fell and left an echo
in the sky.
If you enjoy Stan Renfro's innovative writing, please order his books, Native Star and
All In Orbit through the "Buy Native Star" and "Buy All In Orbit" tabs on this site today.
Your experience in the world of physical matter flows outward from the center of your inner psyche. Then you perceive this experience. Exterior events, circumstances and conditions are meant as a kind of living feedback. Altering the state of the psyche automatically alters the physical circumstances. There is no other valid way of changing physical events.
Seth: 613
Native Pet
Youth
Sasha, you wore snowboots
After every snow.
Cats if they were strangers
Knew which way to go.
Altitude no problem,
Food a sniff away,
After school a romp and pet,
Two humans in your play.
No hike was too arduous,
You rose like a goat,
Ardent in your pleasure for
A life, at death, replete.
Ascension
Staircase rocks you could ascend,
Never once were lost.
Chasm trails yawned in darkness
You arc-jumped across.
We knew every slope and crevice —
Forest-shaded.
Loving each hike into stars
Our time eroded.
School
“Mary had a little lamb.”
Sasha goes to sleep
Under the computers …
Wingate High she roams.
Loved by staff and students,
Searching for lunchmeat,
She knows by those bells
Her second home.
She follows Mr. Renfro
And never makes a noise,
Petted by the girls
And harried by the native boys.
City
Sometimes we’d traverse the suburbs,
Passing urban views,
Charming elders at the rest home
Without even trying.
All we’d have to be was present,
Journey up the halls.
Hands would reach from rooms
And most were smiling.
Your grudges with some dogs
Stayed the same.
Others wagged as friends;
None saw your fame.
Lost and Found
The tracing of your movements
One street at a time,
Boulevards and freeways
More difficult to cross.
A thin light is out there,
All the stars once seen
Together on a mountain,
A loving touch between.
Somewhere on a world,
Together once again.
We will hike the heavens,
A dog before a man.
Today
Sasha, you’d have liked today.
Clouds were the main feature,
Combing over cliffs, drifting slopes,
Smudging the trees.
Where we would have ambled
Really didn’t matter.
Humans make life simple for
The dogs below their knees.
Grave
Bricks and purple pansies,
Sasha, just veneer.
You are in the sky with God,
A planet is your bier.
Bricks and purple pansies,
Vacant time for tears.
Expiation for a pet
Who lived once, 14 years.
Bricks and purple pansies,
Fit them into place.
Sasha, your love for me
Distinguishes your race.
Bricks and purple pansies
Will mold and never cease
Embellishing a legend of
A little dog at peace.
Dying
Playful to the end —
Grabbing Liz’s hand.
Were I with you I’d help you
Make your last legstand.
Sirius
Human, I bear witness
To the dog in sky.
Elegy howling one soul:
Scoshee, Sosha, die.
Prolong, with zest, love’s
Certitide on high.
Orion, undaunted,
Arches on.
Dog Star
Sasha, sky dog, wag for me.
Burst from rapture
— deboned — free!
We’ll romp up night forest trails
Mountains old reality.
