Vox Populi
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H C Palmer: Two Poems
Tide
The earth was forcing me to not forget her.
—Jim Harrison
My father believed the bedrock beneath our ranch—
once an immense sea—
was still alive, that natural rhythms persisted
in its sluggish consolidation.
He taught me to listen for echoes of breaking surf,
but I couldn’t hear them—
even at night with the wind quiet and my ear pressed
to an outcropping.
He believed the gravitational pull of a full perigee
moon could still move
the old limestone. He called it, land tide. I thought
that improbable too,
until one night the moon rose so full of light we could
have counted the calves
in our pasture. Then, when its bottom edge caught
the crest of a hill,
and just as I felt the prairie lift and inch sideways
beneath my feet,
he said, There. That’s it.
I have never recovered from that night, or the weight
of his hand on my shoulder.
~~~
A History Lesson from Ho Chi Minh
A pen is too light, take a chisel to write.
—Basil Bunting
Last night, in my recurring dream, I am at The Wall again
probing our fatal wounds with my fingertips, searching for
some sign of healing inside the chiseled absences.
A layer of freezing rain, sifting from low winter clouds,
has adhered to the granite and shrouded the names.
Ho Chi Minh appears at my side. “May I explain?”
he says. I nod okay. “You and I are war fighters. Yes?
We are poets too. Long before you trashed my French cafés
I was a pastry chef with Escoffier in Paris. So much fighting
before and since, your war was—how do you say? A radar blip?
A pity, for all you have to show for it is written on this wall.”
“Please forgive me, for there is no other way to say this.
What appears to you a rime-ice, camouflaging your comrade’s
names, is simply a metaphor. Go ahead, taste it.
I’ve made a glacé to sugar-coat your defeat.”
~~~
Copyright 2025 H C Palmer. “Tide” first appeared in FEET OF THE MESSENGER, BkMk Press 2017.
H C Palmer served in Vietnam in 1965–1966 as a battalion surgeon. Before retiring, he had a thriving practice specializing in internal and sports medicine, and he now works with veterans with moral injury and PTSD. Palmer’s debut poetry collection is Feet of the Messenger.
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Such thoroughly wonderful poems 💙💙💙💙Sent from my iPhone
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Wow! These poems are incredible! I love the sense of childhood magic, and the child trying so hard to hear the land-tide his father describes, and then finally hearing it: and “There!” The conjunction, the literal intersection, of moon’s edge on the hill’s edge images this moment so beautifully. I might. always remember this poem. I was also carried away by Ho Chi Min seeing the “rime” on the Memorial Wall as “glace”–sorry I can’t get the accent to type—seems horribly appropriate to our moment. I must have this book, H.C. Palmer!
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For Barbara Hun I’m not on either FB or Twitter. But I have a web page I’m hoping to move to WordPress. It is: feet-of-the-messenger.com
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whew! This is the first time I’ve encountered the term land tide but it makes sense to me as I also believe the earth is alive. What a stunning poem to bring this whole idea alive! Thank you for these profound poems I might never have discovered on my own.
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Thank you, Jan!
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O.M.G. Shared for my poet friends to read (and those who might otherwise not attempt to read them).
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Thanks, Rose Mary!
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These are two masterpieces from a masterpiece of a collection. So many of HC’s poems strike deep, listening for those subtle emotional shifts as in “Tides.” Wonderful poems to read this morning. Thank you, HC and thank you, Michael!
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Thanks, Mike.
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Thank you Michael T. for your work….I’ve been introduced to you on Vox P.! And thank you, Michael S. for that!
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I love the idea of land tides and it happens when we read great poems like these–something inside us lifts and inches sideways too. Thank you, H C.
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Thank you, so much! I agree with you, old men, like us are happy to think, “we can not judge our lives as worthless.”
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Masterpieces is correct! HC’s voice is cultured in rich experience and a deep and lasting love and involvement in the written word. “Feet of the Messenger,” is one of those poetry volumes to treasure!
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Thank you, Sean. You are a poet I can love and learn from.
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Congratulations to Vox Populi for publishing these two amazing poems, really masterpieces of imagery, story and emotion. I, too, am a longtime fan of H.C.’s poems and glad to see these here, now. Robert Stewart
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Thanks, Robert. BKMK published a collection by HC, I’m glad to see.
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Thank you, Bob, for this and all you have done to inspire so many poets and writers.
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thanks for the poems. The first one had me thinking about what my dad believed and what he taught me. The second had me rethinking history.
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Thanks, John.
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Thank you, John. I’m still rethinking that history
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are you on facebook or Twitter? I’d love to follow you.
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Me, too
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See below
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I have been a fan of this wonderful man and his poetry ever since we met. The first poem is so close to my heart: A mentor bequeathing pastoral wisdom and land so deeply and fatefully conveyed, and the second poem takes its place among the canon of great poems written at and about the “Wall,” with an amazing appearance of Ho Chi Minh: enough sublimity in verse to last me a year, and its but the 22nd day of its first month. Bring us more HC!
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Thanks, Sean! I love your enthusiasm.
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Thank you, Sean, I’ve learned a lot from you! I feel like a brother!
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