<![CDATA[G Bennett Humphrey | Author - Poetry]]>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 06:10:35 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[The Metaphysics of Something Red]]>Fri, 30 Jun 2017 15:29:20 GMThttp://www.gbennetthumphrey.com/poetry/the-metaphysics-of-something-redPicture"Metaphysics of Something Red," by Patricia Nolan
Note to Reader

Sharing childhood experience with my little patients on 2 East in Breaking Little Bones  was an enjoyable task in writing my book. 

The same also was true when I told my own tales of being a young boy to my daughter, Hilary. At the turn of the twenty-first century, we visited the Humphrey homestead in southern Michigan and stood on the foundation of the red barn of my youth. Hilary asked me to cite this poem; it's one of her favorites, mine too. The poem and Pat's watercolor were part of the 2010 Visual Artists' Exhibition; "Voice, Verse, and Vision.

Among my synapses
cycle the realities of childhood. 
 
The largest building
on our homestead, 
a three-story barn, 
lofts, windows - all
set on fieldstones carefully fitted
and joined by mortar. 
 
Musty aromas in the lofts, 
before the midday breeze,
sweat of a well-worked horse 
in the evening stalls.
The omnipresent ammonium 
from the lower pens.
 
Cooing pigeons in the eaves.
Stomp of an impatient equine
on wooden planks.
Slosh of hooves
in manure and mud.
 
Functional doors.  
A few smaller on ground level,
pig-and sheep-sized 
larger opened onto the meadow,
bovine-big doors.
At the end of an earth ramp, double doors, 
a team of Belgians and wagon wide. 
Within, piles of hay for a jumping boy
to throw at his tag-along sister,   
airborne dust caught a shaft of light. 
 
If my dendrites and the foundation are all 
that remain, then:
Why do the stones echo distant sounds?
Why do faint odors hide in the cracks?
And why is the barn still so red?
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The Magpie Cried by Ben Humphrey
Finishing Line Press p 23, 2013
]]><![CDATA[Passages]]>Thu, 18 May 2017 16:08:49 GMThttp://www.gbennetthumphrey.com/poetry/passagesPicture
Note to Reader

My parents were both avid readers and bed time was a chance for my mother to share her love of books with me.  It also a quiet time, no distractions, only my mother's voice.   That time from childhood would carry over into my adult years.  Here’s a poem about that entitled Passages

She made my bed in the morning
so, at night when I crawled in
​the covers were all arranged,
yet there was that reassuring ritualistic tuck.

Bed time stories,
poems when I was six,
were read to me 
when I was very young. 

Another safe passage
into the night, in a snug place;
I was never afraid
of the dark.

Those tucks, those words were there
for later passages
many foreboding
all in the dark.

I still have 
the books and a blanket.
When all is quiet in my head
I can still hear her voice - reading.

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The Magpie Cried by Ben Humphrey
Finishing Line Press p 7, 2013
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