Robert Witmer

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

I get in line with the seabirds. They seem to be looking at their reflections in the thin film of water behind the retreating wave. So I look down. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit with a snorkel in my left hand. It’s hot, and the water smells like gasoline. A kid runs by and the birds scatter. There I am. In a baggy bathing suit – all alone.

a bald tire
on a patch of ice
the world turns

First published in The Other Bunny, January 6, 2025.

Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

“If only we could placate the world’s rage with a drop of poetry or of love . . . .”
— Pablo Neruda

unemployed youth
a roll of the dice
against a brick wall

eyes shut tight
the stone sleeps
in a fist

light bleeding
through stained glass
the rubble still warm

bomb site
nothing but a staircase
beneath the pale stars

war graves
the silence
of forgetful flags

life after death
the hidden truth
maggots

dreams clot
the bloodstream of time
fighting for peace

summit meeting
the overwhelming presence
of nothingness

shouldering responsibility
he listens carefully
to his parrot

cover-up
blaming the system
for the fig leaf

absence of doubt
the poisoned chalice
we swallow with a yawn

online news paper over the past

hope
a spark
on the anvil

prayer flags
different colors
pointing in the same direction

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

The Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in grade school and we had drills. The same loud alarm as a fire drill, but a different experience altogether. Instead of walking single file out to the playground, joking around with your friends, we had to sit against a wall in a dark corridor hugging our knees to our hearts. Dead silence was expected. But sometimes we whispered. Kid stuff.

spring rain
children holding umbrellas
upside down

(First published in Presence, Issue #81, March 2025.)

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

new music
a catatonic scale
for the poet’s requiem

we are but clouds
of cosmic dust
collapsing in a dream

apples sweeten
in the shadows
hungry birds

dark secrets
from a broken heart
arctic waters warm

water
into wine
resource wars

the courthouse
in the pawnshop window
antique scales

haves
and halve nots
taking the last peace

vacuum sealed
the totalitarian minds
of mixed nuts

fanning himself
with a meat cleaver
the butcher sighs

a thin rat
over broken glass
moonlight in a slum

rain
a gravedigger’s fingers
flipping a coin

gravestones
huddle in spring grass
a church bell
without a tongue

waves leapfrog
the ripping tide
empty pews

dream songs
in night’s chamber
pot

our eyes
glazed donuts
sweetening the whole

each pledge
a bullet whistling
hand over heart
to stop the blood

polished buttons reflect
a make believe sun
ashes remembering books

worn hands
scouring pots
the cold pipes cough

wind-up toy
the high-pitched whine
in war’s broken hands

First Published: Lothlorien Poetry Journal, December 2023

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

Herdsman: I am on the brink of dreadful speech.
Oedipus: And I of dreadful hearing. Yet I must hear.

wise men
the star that guides
on the blink

the labyrinth
behind her eyes
a broken thread

a brilliant idea
out of the blue
Icarus

twitter
the bead
in his whistle

sunlight
on ice
the banker’s smile

somewhere
in the dark room
a clock ticks

wild canaries
singing on the wing
from the coal mine

climate change
we turn to face
a firing squad

war
a fistful of ashes
in a game of dice

twisting shadows
beneath falling leaves
war’s children

little red rooster
the hen’s dream
sizzles in the skillet

First Published: Lothlorien Poetry Journal, September 2023

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

A poem asks the reader to participate in the making of its meaning, and in this way binds the reader to the writer, while leaving the reader free to bring her own mental associations to the poet’s words and images. Thus, the poem combines a private and a public language in a process of communication. While poetry “makes nothing happen” (as Auden stated in his famous eulogy for Yeats), it can lift the veil from deeply disturbing aspects of our collective lives and in so doing ask us to rethink those troubling realties, which we often prefer to ignore, so long as we feel comfortably secure in our own personal lives. By engaging individual imaginations, poetry has the power to bridge the boundaries and divisions that keep us apart. This is not to say that poetry can improve the world on a scale that would empower the many millions of disadvantaged, mistreated, and politically invisible human beings. But it can help the rest of us to see that these people exist, and that their sufferings are real, and that we could make efforts in the real world to ameliorate the condition of their lives.

the wind picks up
a campaign poster
the hair just right

executive abusio
the warped rule
of blind mouths

wondering which way to turn the nut in charge

a caterpillar
crawls across the evening news
that orange hair

the king of clubs
trumped —
he throws his toys out of the playpen

politics
the ambidextrousness
of a dead bird

day laborer
climbing a ladder
out of the basement

pencil stub
wrinkled fingers pinch
another penny

a cold wind
haggles with golden leaves
savings and loan

a fork
in the road
nothing to eat

the cat lady’s eye
strays
each with its own name

a beggar sings
over a coffee tin
nickels counting time

no newspaper coverage
the homeless man
asleep on a bench

a homeless woman
sips from a birdbath
wrinkles in a rainbow

skin
brown and bruised –
the fruit within decays

road sign
rust
in the bullet holes

Peshawar
apples stacked neatly
as the guns

constant drizzle
a faded flag hangs heavy
over another war

fallen
into fallen leaves
toy soldier

crow’s feet
around the eyes
sunset on the battlefield

demilitarized zone
the space between
jugglers

the banker’s heart as capacious as an open-pit mine

nativity scene
behind an iron gate
the wise men long gone

tree by the wall
a solitary poem
in a life sentence

muddy field
a child in rags
sings to his buffalo

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

light
imprisoned in diamonds
the dark mine a dollar a day

windblown sand –
children in rags
staring as the boat recedes

orphans at the stoplight
together
we roll up our windows

winter
a bent spoon
in an empty pot

shoe polish
the toxic smell
of unemployment

a few stars
fewer leaves
his cardboard home

a rainbow ribbon
on a rich man’s sky
tree stumps

outside the new megastore
empty shopping carts
for the homeless

yesterday’s snow
under a naked tree
a homeless woman awaiting spring

old nails squeaking
in shrinking wood
campaign promises

the populist’s campaign
a loud speaker
distorts the platitudes

air raid
our last loaf of bread
blackens in the oven

a child’s balloon
drifts away
the wall crowned with broken bottles

First published: Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 17

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Human rights encompasses a great deal. As stated in the Preamble to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Extreme inequality has profound human rights implications. Nearly 10% of the world’s population lives in extreme poverty, and over 40% live on less than $5.50 per day, thus depriving those members of the human family access to basic needs and services.  

By Robert Witmer
Tokyo, Japan

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left
            — Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”

From Pangaea to the Tethys Sea our Mother Earth goes round, and round our central star appears, the Sun, traveling east to west, from Ethiopia to Hesperides, each day a blessing in this circle of life. Brought into this vital light with plants of every kind and fauna filling land and sea, fruitful, we were. And it was good.

We crept into caves to mark the walls with ochred images of creatures honored for their flesh, their spirit and being, different from our own, yet of the same.

The First Peoples made their homes, dressing their bodies, teaching their tongues, cherishing their kinship with the land.

We learned to turn the very Earth, the oldest of our gods, with plows, back and forth, year after year, reaping, sowing, wearing away the immortal, the seemingly inexhaustible land we would one day forget. And so, as our numbers rose and our cities grew and our knowledge fed our need for power, we tamed and conquered all. Or so we thought we would, quick, ready, resourceful humankind, now more human, less kind, kinship reduced to a great machine.

Our hearts cooled, the Earth warmed, we saw no end in sight. Round and round, each fight, another victory. And then we mastered space itself, we landed on the moon. What sight! The Earth in space – “a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void.” A blue dot where we are all one people, living in one world, together in our need to keep this improbable home home to all creation in all its diversity, its fragile beauty, our one and only home.

Let the earth last
And the forests stand a long time
            — from a poem by the 15^th century Aztec poet Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin

weather satellites
go round and round
empty promises

fracking
we learn new ways
not to change

an electric car
sighs to a stop
the last glacier groans

snowmelt
plum blossoms
on a polar bear

bird of paradise
a rainbow’s love song
in a chainsaw repertoire

strip mined
our purple mountain majesties
the emperor’s new clothes

old pond
spewing toxic waste
a frog croaks

the caboose
rattles past the setting sun
dust on stunted corn

washing up
on an island paradise
plastic plates

rising tide
she lifts her skirt
to wipe away a tear

a blue balloon
rising into a summer sky
the child waving goodbye

dry riverbed
the old bridge creaks
bone on bone

First published: Drifting Sands Haibun, Issue 15