A little glimpse into my heart. Your comments are welcome at the link below. The other link below (NaPoWriMo 2022) will take you to the 30 poems I wrote for National Poetry Month's a poem a day challenge.
they come to us every day,
flitting and flapping, singing and winging
in constant endless streams of commotion
their numbers growing each morning
vexingly exponentially like the warning of
the algebraic certainty of the federal debt
they never rest
their exclamation-point tails signaling
squirrels, crows, hovering lovers
and a single rose blooming on a distant asteroid.
So here we stay
our what-ifs piling around our ears
with the insistent incessant persistent coming of the wrens of regret
My brother warned me
It - The Blob -
-shiny gloppy sticky jelly monster-
lived and breathed and oozed
behind my sofa,
just a second’s slime
away from my tiny bed.
Night after night
I cowered under cotton covers
and waited
-chest tight, eyes wide, breath slight-
for the moment I knew with
every quivering inch of my skinny spindly self
would come,
and slime would ooze out and consume me,
limb by 5-year-old limb
in excruciating slow motion.
Now I laugh fondly at my little girl gullibility
But
When a slash of moon disturbs my dreams I carefully avoid the sofa.
Fussy curls,
Sleek silky bob,
Petite, statuesque,
Brunette, blonde,
She was everywhere,
That girl my mother glorified
Why can’t you be more like her?
Church-bred girls beguiled her -
-smiling Doris Day and Donna Reed
dolls gliding in uncomplicated shoes
with starched manners
and puffed sleeved voices.
She never noticed the soiled lips,
the crumpled tissues stuffing the bras,
or worse, the girl behind the script.
No bigger than a wish,
He is neither jewel nor light
nor gleaming sun.
He is nothing but silent flight.
His dainty wings
span no more than an elfing’s hand.
Yet their fairy size
cannot keep your
soul from finding flight
whenever he alights.
His silent breath has no flute,
he sings without lilt or tune.
He will not rouse you from your bed
unless your eye spies the sun-bred
shine of his breast - not black, nor brown,
nor sleeping blue, just pink - no other hue.
Succumb. Love will fill the fissure between
your bones and soul - beneath this wish and need
to drink it deeply, swimming veins with bright
impossible fish that tickle toes, and
nibble fears and tears, now swept clean away
beneath the weedy currents of mistrust and lust
that doused and drowned a simple longing
for belonging. So, succumb. Set yourself
ablaze with phosphorescent waves of heart,
Or better yet, breathe a volcanic spume
of flame, red and bold as coursing blood.
Embrace the hot chaos, powerful and true.
Now hush. Love, invited outlasts a storm.
Breathe glow and gleam of embers, ever warm.
Wispy fading thinning hair
(I’ll dye it purple, I don’t care)
A sloppy nose like an overblown rose
(but it’s still prettier than my toes)
Frayed linen skin - all thin and baggy-
(do I sound just a wee bit haggy?)
creaking knees that sing off-key
(I actually enjoy their harmony)
My shoulders slump, my tummy’s round
(blithely festooned and colorfully crowned)
Yet I’m quite fond of my gnomish cast I am happily truly myself at last
Music blooms beside and between us
A surround of sound, a constant refrain -
the river’s gurgle, the brook’s blue burble
the slipping dripping splish of rain,
and black basso hush only mountains sustain.
French verbs lilting, Hawaiian lips sighing,
German nouns quilting, Shona crying.
Crows speak angst in raucous chorus, winging
to sweeten the tweets of robin’s decrying.
Be still, just listen - the hush, the sibilance, the ringing embrace - a wild heart’s singing,
I
The creek hums
with the sun’s tongue
singing to me, entranced on its banks,
by the lazily lapping,
licking and splashing trills
of light atop the bubbles and burbles.
Treble notes that never permeate
the shadowy depths.
II
Betsy’s wand of a tail wags in rhythm -
A metronome lashing and flashing
to and for, conducting,
as she places her paws in delicate pauses
between the rippling pebble notes.
Dipping and sipping
and snapping at twinkles of minnows
III
Jan brings bread and glinting string.
Crooning and lilting in my ear,
“Shhh, if we’re very still,
We just might catch an electric eel.”
IV
We hush, the three of us.
Slipping and swaying,
Listing and listening
to the glisten and gurgle,
Till suddenly we are awash in giggles
Watching the string dance and wiggle.
V
Betsy leaps, splashes into my lap,
Slapping her tail, spraying sprinkles
in a tuneful croon of light.
We hoot and we warble, singing and
Ringing out to Mary and Doug,
To Leslie and Jae. to join us,
this sunny day, in merry boisterous chorus.
We brought you home-
You were just a wee sprout,
proud and newly grown.
Smaller that the baby
blueberry bush outside your window
We rooted you deep in the loam and dust of us.
We fed you on niblets of story and sunlight
And watched your spirit unfurl,
Curled and bold like blueberry leaves in early spring.
We waited for that first fruit -
That sweet tang of your tongue on words
ripening beneath soft petals of love.
You would thrive, we knew,
like the blueberry bush
we planted when you arrived, rooted deep in the loam and dust of us.
Spindrift clouds. The air breathes mossy and sweet. Some come with
fly-away eyes, others have pinpricks reflecting night. Their hair snaps
with static or sings with silk. Magic unfiltered. Robust smiles. Flared fingers.
Their lips sealed with secrets. The scent is unfelt - of whimsy, maybe.
A mess of pine bark, night-blooming jasmine, portulaca pollen and
octopus ink, I think. Of course, with underlying musk
of book dust. Their limbs are gangly or soft, hips slim and fat and more.
The sap rises in the dandelions to greet them, and the buttercups spread to meet them. Daylight blooms sweet when the witches come.
Sunlight warms its wood
- loving strokes in the shape of hands
whorls of light layered brown and gold
like gleaming hazel eyes.
Scars stipple the skin of the legs and bench -
Pale, rippled,
etching deep the satin flesh.
Still standing solid and certain beneath garlands of devil’s ivy- -Thriving writhing vines - a wreath for worn edges - verdant with unapologetic life A gleaming presence in his eternal absence.
35 years gone.
It falls like a gentle poison, glazing
blood and bile - a slick and sickly sheen too thick
for breath or breadth of thought, muscles lazing,
eyesight hazing as though facing a lick
of light and shade - the flicker of candlewick
that limns the mind but obscures the fine crease
between skin and bone, beneath heart and ease
that pleats the soul delicately, like lace
so fine it binds the loosened fragile piece of self forever lost to its rightful place.
Time braids our bodies to earth
sticky spider silk
plaiting minutes in pouches
dangling like bushtit nests
caressed by wind and rain
ephemeral as buttercups
fleet as the crows at dinnertime
in a leaf-fat autumn dusk.
We are pendulous
expressions of the endless now possibility.
Those flagrant vines, all piss and breeze -
-The rich and rapacious weeds who prevail
upon the bony arms of limping trees
to shelter their limbs that clutch and flail
at meager branches grown from wintering roots,
and seek the summer’s sap in lifeless mud.
Beleaguered fibers thirsting for green of shoots
to feed the brazen thrust of greedy leafy buds,
all doomed to never bloom, yet sprouting creepers
who finger fragile core of fleshy fruits
where sleeping seeds burrow ever deeper
awaiting release from suckering brutes.
But love quickens Gaia’s feracious womb where seeds erupt to smother weeds’ voracious bloom.
Water Lilies Ballet
A frolic of dustlight
a merriment of sunlight
slowly deliquesce
into arabesques of color
violet shimmer, cobalt gleam
cadmium yellow, viridian green
tonal mist glimmers the air
a playful pirouette of pigment
sending sense of sunlight asunder
Yet below, quiet wonder,
a muted requiem of hue
cobalt swirls with palest blue
vermillion fades to rose
A delicate dance
in shadowed depths
Sunlight plundered.
Coffee
Ah, bliss
Just a whiff of mist rising
licking my waiting lips.
This fragrant kiss
too rich to resist.
still I linger
Watching a finger of steam rise,
A swirling cirrus blurring the blue
And lifting my eyes
to rippling sky loud with clouds
tossing sparrow song, crow clamor
and inner chatter
Asunder.
A moment of wonder
winging, singing, flinging me
into caffeinated gratitude.
Solitude Ah, bliss.
He poured umbra over his shoulders sluicing color off his back to puddle languidly in desolate corners and seep soundlessly away spilling frail filaments of lost light his grief made lucent
on lusty scrape of wind, she soars to settle, hushed,
too dense with lilt of pine and sun to rise anew
her satin feathers rest yet fluoresce air, unrushed,
with languid fragrant breath of slow perfume
tainted wild and wrestled from wind and shadowed sky
and froth of flagrant tempests yet to bloom
she’s harbinger, soul-singer, soothsayer, spy our mothers’ muse shining through stygian gloom.
All day the sun had danced on these fledgling waves
jagged hillocks gleaming like rumpled silk
limning the peaks and valleys the ridges and folds with silver glints of fire.
Now as the sun retreats to gild the hills
the waves rekindle its fevered touch
tamping it down to drown in fathomless depths
Swallowing it whole to sink below wrinkled water
to resurface as hammered silver jewels A burning grace
it sits on the tongue
coats it sunny yellow
buttery melt lusciously sweet
it licks the back of bare knees
a puppy kiss of ticklish bliss
mornings it teases the lips
tingles them pink
savory sip potently deep
middays it warms the arms
with azure breeze
breathily etched, sunnily fresh
twilight it bedazzles the eyes
in winking skies
shimmery swing radiantly bling
it babbles it sings
it chimes it rings
this flagrant fragrant chorus we sing happy
