3 poems by poet, Terry Jude Miller

Terry Jude Miller is a published and award winning poet from Fort Bend County, Texas.  A Juried Poet of the 2011 Houston Poetry Festival, his work has been published in dozens of print and online publications.  His poem, "The Diagnosis", appeared in the Birmingham Arts Journal. He has read his poetry at venues throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.  Miller has just published his third book titled "The Butterfly Canonical." His two previous books of poetry are titled "The Day I Killed Superman" and "What If I Find Only Moonlight?" He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of Texas, and the Gulf Coast Poets Society. Terry is a retired professor of eMarketing and held an Innovation Fellowship at Kaplan University.  He currently works as a marketing communications online systems and support manager for a Fortune Global 500 company. 

The Long Kiss

It is time's most practiced trick to turn what seems like yesterday

into decades of marriage, but here we are in our dog-earred page

of heaven watching the sun slip from its barky hook behind our

neighbor's pecan tree. This is a quiet time with few spoken

words because most of our communication has become telepathic

through practice and the unfolded knowledge of each other.

When we do speak, it's to break the silence with the most

important of all words, followed by a kiss, that for some grateful

reason, is longer than usual tonight.

~Terry Jude Miller

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Letters To The Dead

I am east and you are as west as the sun will go. It is April, the

month of your birth. The mornings have learned to sing again

with the trembling voice of first light. I find it easier to talk to

you when I write down what I have to say. There are volumes on

my bookshelf gathering dust and sadness. Reflection is thin stem

ware that breaks at the least provocation; but if I fill it just right

and stroke it lightly with my tear-moistened finger, it sings just

what I desire to hear. Much forgiveness rolled between us in your

final years, followed by acceptance of never being able to change

what sets fast in early days. I imagine standing in your shadow,

then you stepping aside to let the sun reach me, as it does this

April morning when I wish you were here to share one more day's

unfolding.

~Terry Jude Miller

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Bather

in aqua arc

of the oscillating sprinkler

a mockingbird batons

his smoky wings

like a mad conductor

to keep his feathered being

aflight in the cool reprieve

clouds tearless for two months

hang like socks nailed to a blue wall

the early heat of late spring

pierces tiny creatures

who dare come so close

driven by necessities

risk-taking replaces knowledge

to sate thirsts

that prove the bird

in a partial definition of life

the sprinkler remains on

until the bather has quenched

his body

I am sated too

from a thirst of which

I was unaware

~Terry Jude Miller

More poems by Terry Jude Miller: 

Second Wind

On Loan from Vincent

Everything

Musician Wife

Video Poems by Terry Jude Miller:
Letters to the Dead