Tag: Donald Wheelock

Two Poems by Donald Wheelock

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Monday Morning

The wind whistled around the house just now
with that insistence winter air reserves
for nights with something wistful to declare.
A fly’s frustration breaks the daylight’s silence
with a buzzing at the windowpane. The trees
along the wood’s edge have that look that says
it’s time to give up color for the season.

There’s not much new, I’ve seen it all before;
the best we can expect are quiet joys.
November’s in the air. Enjoy the browns,
the new transparency of trees, the way
exuberance has turned from gold and reds to age.


“Looking for a Quieter Experience?”

A sign in a local library

I’d hear a dose of irony,
were it not for children’s voices
ricocheting off the plastered walls, their glee
permitted here among the softer noises.

Check out a pair of Bose headphones,
the sign suggests, a photo of a pair
they offer for the drones and moans
of ambient air.

No thanks—and my reactions were extreme:
it’s quiet now and I should shout
for joy at being given such a theme
to write about.




Donald Wheelock finds poetry, a preoccupation for many years, has taken over his life after a career of teaching and composing concert music. Sparks of Calliope, THINK, Blue Unicorn, and many other journals have published his poems. His two full-length books, It’s Hard Enough to Fly and With Nothing but a Nod have been published by Kelsay Books and David Robert Books, respectively.

Two Poems by Donald Wheelock

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

One by One

What happens when your myths fail, one by one:
the moon above the mountain’s just the moon,
the end of candle glow can’t come too soon.
Or when you think the day is finally done

another window opens on the view
you’d held as sacrosanct, its history
so full of what you thought was meant to be,
replaced, now, by events dead-drably new?

Or when you knew what happened surely would—
no one could love you that much, or that long—
the world is made of death, and hurt and wrong,
and, daily, evil suffocates your mood.

So why this happiness? Why think this way?
Those myths were hardly worth believing in.
Open your eyes! This moon, it must have been,
today, that drove the myths of youth away.


The Other Mind

A thought appears without my having done
a thing to make it happen, like the first
and every line of verse up to this point…
why does it happen—and in such a burst—
as if another mind wished to anoint
a thought while it is only half begun?

Take note: that other mind does make mistakes;
it likes to start you off on tangents so
divorced from inspiration nothing will
enliven what refuses, still, to grow
and help you gather courage for the kill.
Yes. To fail at times is what it takes.

One mind nudges the other mind in line
to let them both but neither take the lead;
let mind with mind and line with line combine.




Donald Wheelock has published in Think, Able Muse, The Orchards, Ekphrasis, Blue Unicorn and many other journals welcoming formal poetry. His chapbook, In the Sea of Dreams, is available from Gallery of Readers Press. His first full-length book of poems, It’s Hard Enough to Fly, appeared last September from Kelsay Books. David Robert Books will publish his second book, With Nothing But a Nod, next spring.

Two Poems by Donald Wheelock

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

For My Sake

The barn I love to write about
sinks into earth, if just this time of year.
Illusion being what it is,
the gable end has grown a trifle stout;
the windows have now disappeared—
the foliage is responsible for this.

The sumac that was hacked away—
was it just four years ago?—has grown
to match the metal roof in height.
The antique aspect of the barn’s display—
the weathered boards, their care postponed—
the vegetation has now masked from sight.

But this old barn will rise again,
if only by illusion. The heat will break.
Fall will clear the view of leaves,
turn brown the hills and fields of grain,
and as a favor for my sake,
revive its dignity from sills to eaves.


First Solo Drive at Night

I’ll watch you leave the house, your maiden trip
an inspiration by the winter fire;
I’ll stand watch by the kitchen door, admire
your firm resolve, your mock stiff upper lip,
the poise with which you stock your purse
with tissues, find your keys, your charging phone,
and walk the short way to the car alone.
These and other details I rehearse,
if only to myself: nighttime driving
is, for the first time, challenging enough,
without the fear of post-surgical stuff,
the unrelenting thought of just arriving.
A daughter you could be, your stage in life
youth’s next threshold—but no, you are my wife.




Donald Wheelock has published many poems in journals that welcome formal poetry. His chapbook In the Sea of Dreams is available at Gallery of Readers Press, Northampton, MA. His first full-length book of poetry, It’s Hard Enough to Fly, will be issued in the fall of 2022 by Kelsay Books.

“Hopper’s Dories” by Donald Wheelock

~ Randal A. Burd, Jr. ~ Leave a comment
—after Edward Hopper’s The Dories, Ogunquit, 1914 (public domain)
Whitney Museum of American Art

Attentive to the forces of the tide,
they point up into open ocean breeze
like hungry pets anticipating food.
They feel the breeze enliven what they see.
A distant shore encloses open sea.

A view of coast as crisp and deep as life
itself, before the smudges of mankind
applied a slick to every shore and reef;
even the clouds are swept clean by the wind.

Feathery skies of sun-made summer choose
a clear-eyed, optimistic morning view
to paint the cove profusions of its blues.

The froth of distant ocean surf and light
explodes into the dory-sides as white.




Donald Wheelock spent forty years writing formal poetry before reaching the stage of submitting his favorites for publication. Formal poetry, once relegated to second fiddle in a career of writing chamber, vocal and orchestral music, has now demanded equal time. Indeed, it has taken over his life. He has published a chapbook, In the Sea of Dreams, with Gallery of Readers Press, and placed poems in Blue Unicorn, Ekphrasis, Equinox, Linea, The Lyric, and elsewhere. He is trying to place two full-length books of his poems. He lives with his wife Anne in an old house at the edge of a hayfield in Whately, Massachusetts.