Steven W. Baker

 

Steven W. Baker

 

Of Time And Water

 

Shall we swim again in the midnight ocean

Where nothing is shallow or permanent?

Come unhinged as fish nibble our toes?

This is how a lost moment goes.

 

Shall we remember then each other

As if the waves never lashed the sand

And think of time as a looping river

Touching itself as it nears the sea?

 

 

Night Symphony

 

That night, it rained all night long

One wave of rain after another

Breaking on the patio and roofs

Just outside our bedroom's screen door.

 

What beautiful peace and contentment

To lie in bed listening to the drops

Rise to a crescendo of pulverization

Then fall to staccato, then to drip, drip.

 

Maybe that is where music first arose

When some ancient artist lay in his cave

Listening to the rainfall on jungle trees

Cascading down to earth upon stones.

 

All night the notes and tempo changed

Never ceased, never paused for breath

But I could hear you breathing beside me

Unaware of the moment or the music.

 

We two have come a long way together

I think I know you better than this rain

We are entwined like the soaked tree limbs

That wish they were warm and dry like us.

 

I love the rain with a passion cool and calm

Remembering the rains we danced drenched

The fierce tempests sweeping the sea

The time the wind made you hide behind a tree.

 

But I love you more than all those rains together

Though we gather but a drop together here

And a deluge of separation over there

The rain plays the symphony of our love.

 

 

The Leonids Meteor Shower

 

Spinning gallantly around the sun

The Earth returns to the same place

In the speeding solar system

Spaced in time by a year.

 

When the leaves drop

When the snows come

When the flowers bloom

When the heat stifles

And the full moon rises

I am reminded of you.

 

Now an entire year has passed

Since we made love into the night

Then awoke ungodly early

To watch the meteor shower.

 

Like yesterday I remember the cold

The unwarm fires on the beach

Streaming lights that filled the dark sky

And the new woman by my side.

 

This year I have to endure

The shooting stars without you

But the passage of time

Makes me realize something important.

 

I know you so much better now

Than when we were new

But for some strange reason

I've fallen more in love with you.

 

I marvel how you did that

The beach fires have long since died

The old comet's trail has lessened

Low and high tides come and gone.

 

But the fire still burns within me

Shooting stars fill my heart

Whenever I think of you, my love

And that mystical morning when Fate

Granted my deepest wish.

 

STEVEN W. BAKER

 

STEVEN W. BAKER: This is going to leave a lot out, but maybe it will leave in enough to be useful. Steven W. Baker was born in a small town in Indiana, sometime near the dawn of the postmodern era and the end of whatever came before. After finding an old, junked radio in the trash, he started his first electronics company during high school. He graduated from Purdue University with a BA in English and from Indiana University with an MA in English. He served in the US Army during Vietnam, but, because of a football injury, remained stateside working as an Army radio station DJ. He was also the editor of an underground, anti-war newspaper, The Spread Eagle. His attention during these university and military years turned more and more to writing, and he contributed to many of the publications of that era - poetry, fiction, and political writings. Returning to civilian life, he got married, taught high school English for eight years, and became the father of three beautiful children. Finally, he went back to work in engineering, serving as Chief Electrical Engineer at Land O'Frost, Inc., near Chicago, for ten years. Then he started his second company, which designed and implemented automation control systems for factories all over the world. He lived and worked in the US, Canada, Mexico, China, Indonesia, the UK, and Puerto Rico. During these years, he also found time to sail extensively in the Caribbean and, for some years, co-owned a bar, Machi's, on the island of St. Lucia. This traveling took a toll on his marriage, but in 2004, he met and married his second wife. They split their time between living in Bolivia and the US for the next several years. He retired from engineering in 2007. For several years, the couple owned and operated a restaurant in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Finally, they sold the restaurant and returned to the US to live in Gainesville, Florida, near his daughters and his wife's son. Starting about 1998, writing took center stage more and more in his life, as he concentrated again on writing poetry, fiction, political and travel journalism, and opinion pieces. The focus of his poetry continues to be the human interior - our reactions to what we experience. The exterior world can be described by science, philosophy, and the arts, but what that exterior produces inside human beings is perhaps best communicated using poetry.