Robert Leary

Robert Leary Poems

The puppet has a vision
With many strings attached
A life for every season
Winter, Summer, Spring or Fall
...

It was a love so deep inside
That in his heart
The butterfly doth reside
...

In the garden
You sit upon my book
I look you in the eye
…receive a pleasant look
...

How do you teach someone to love?
They sit before you: "I don't feel the way you do".
"Of course not" you say…"you have to learn to love…
You knew it as a child and lost it like a toy, broken.
...

I

Oh willow like a bird so fair
Your hair abloom ignites the air
...

An empty vase upon the table
decorously awaiting your return.
What flowers do you ceremoniously
bring, ambrosial dreams to bloom,
...

How like a bird you are
Heroic canary
In my heart’s mine
Gull hung in the wind
...

8.

It feels awkward walking alone
Along this pier tonight
Shyly I stare at the screws
In the planking
...

The rain growls on the roof,
starving, dog chew bones in the gutter.
All night the frightened trains gape
though the tunnels in my mind
...

Death, wait, wait I have more things to do
I’ll take care of what’s left of me
Just wait, wait, my son’s not ready
The boat’s not finished
...

Has the world become so incestually complex
that song no longer rhymes
that laughter is a sullen gesture to appease another
that being unique we're isolated
...

Thanks for last night.
For once I awoke and felt whole.
Not that we’ll ever be together again
Only time holds the answer to that question
...

14.

Like the petals of a flower
Your smile rifts the air
Meddles abundant in the pollen
That is the breath that lifts despair…
...

Fukushima Daiichi’s shift manager:
“let me be the one…”
I’d struggle to pronounce your name if I knew it
And can only imagine your silent thoughts
...

I had to break this arrow in my heart
That I could ride the horse beneath me
Yet replete with love a storm
Still beats as I leave you
...

He rattles by
Steeped in his Haitian heritage
A furtive glance
Speaks a nervous affirmation of our states
...

How impersonal the hour
We're searching for each other
Faces I mistake for yours turn to dust
What was it you were wearing
...

There is a world beneath a leaf
In which the beetle finds relief
There, alone, it ponders what could have been
Until it was too late to start again
...

I sit alone upon this beach
Two divers one close one far
Patrol the waters to the East
I ponder which one am I
...

Robert Leary Biography

I started writing poetry at the age of twenty at the University of Connecticut. At UConn I studied with James Scully and won the Wallace Stevens Award for poetry several times. While there I published poems in the Wormwood Review. Upon graduation I entered Harvard first studying with Richard Tillinghast in the summer. I then was introduced to Robert Lowell, submitted a manuscript and was formally accepted at Harvard to study with Lowell. At Harvard I published poems in the Harvard Advocate. I only recently started writing again for my own entertainment.)

The Best Poem Of Robert Leary

The Pundit And The Puppet

The puppet has a vision
With many strings attached
A life for every season
Winter, Summer, Spring or Fall
Not liking one or all
He can ask the fingers for revision
If he wants to posture large or small
He can change for any reason

For personalities he might jest
Play the role of Rufus Rose
A modern version of Pinocchio
A rendering of Cyrano
Court the lovely courtesan
Princes Summer Fall Winter Spring
Turn the mirror on himself
Act out who he wish he was
Or with flick of finger
Play himself again

Robert Leary Comments

Michael Walker 21 April 2014

He has the right background to be a poet, going to Harvard and meeting Robert Lowell, a major poet. All Leary needs to do now is write more and more.

2 0 Reply
Michael Walker 21 April 2014

Very original, thought-provoking poems. When I have time, I will read his other poems.

0 0 Reply

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