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.
The windows flung wide, chewies and poems tossed aside
as rain rushes down and down to bless the pine trees
We pause, puppy and I, to taste the green that eases
the air between dripping sky and puppy fluff
that sprinkles our sofa and rugs and rhymes
It is sublime, this moment free of time Just us sitting and sitting by the singing rain of spring
Somedays the sun hangs listless
Half-lit, tilting toward nothing but sky
limning only the tips of clouds.
Beneath, bird breasts gleam flat matte
They offer blurred paeans on
fluttering wings, held breathless
behind sluggish glass. Restless.
Maybe we can breathe for them
Just whisper a bubble of faith
Until the sun remembers The taste of summer breeze on its fiery tongue
His sock hangs off the edge of bed,
rumpled sheets flinging
it aside long-legged jeans peek out
from the pillow, unfluffed
and lean, a blanket trails a blue
question mark on the floor.
A journal spills interrupted dreams
everywhere
books dribbling pages littering pencils
So quiet
only a sigh of wind whispers behind the curtain
Ghostly motion
unbodied motion Holding its breath in the empty room
She pussyfooted down the branch,
her twitch of tail a cadence of caution.
Inch by inch, she stretched herself out,
rotund tummy unrolling, still stout,
but now long and wide - a flurry of fur
plushing the pine, lulling the tree into slumbrous
motion, rocking up and down, blurring
the green with gray on this sunlit day
To sleep in sun, to smooth the raspy edges
and loosen limbs unleafed and furled tight
like fiddlehead ferns and sleeping trees.
To heed spring’s call, and loll between leaf and sky should, and always shall be, enough for me.
It crept slowly, whiskers a-flutter,
on tiny pink feet, delicately fingered.
It’s snub nose, blushed pink in the evening light,
wrinkled furiously
tasting air blooming with violets and lilacs
while its little teardrop ears chased
meadow songs.
It looped its tail around a daisy stem
and paused to stare at me,
Shiny black eyes
palpitating with nervous stealthy life.
I wanted to brush the yellow pollen from its wee brow,
stroke behind its satin ears, and dress it in purple tulle.
In my dreams,
she’s half brownie, half birdie
always in a flurry,
Scurrying wide and near
to perch and peer
with bright eyes alight
flickering,
Forever in quest of smiles
To line her nest
She bustles about
On little feet
Sharing bits of sweet
this and that of chat
and a beaming smile
or kindly pat.
And some nights
when she bobs nearby
I see with my dreaming eye
a wee hint -a little inkling-
Of glossy beating wings
Palpitating with life And for a moment, my heart sings.
A blaze of red against a sky scoured white
by wind, the sweater straggles, caught tight
by scraggly limbs. Its empty arms reach down
as though desperate to clutch the crusted ground.
It’s frayed and nubby, plush cashmere now spent
and left to waft a hint of lingering floral scent
mixed with leaf mold and dirt and dying things gone soft.
I tug.The branch holds tight while wind whips it aloft
and sends its arms flailing, reaching for flight.
Then, briefly, within, a memory of skin catches light.
A hint of arms once warmed, a gathered waist. once draped, a ghost of life it once embraced.
A sigh, a moan, a whimpered low groan;
As I, on creaking knees that sing off-key
Endure this stoop of wearied bones,
With plaited skin and wisps of hair turned reed.
I bend to earth, a gnarled and wizened tree
In prayerful posture, seeking things that grow,
Unlikely beast, a gnome I surely seem
Festooned in dusty gleam of ancient snow.
Unseen, unsung, I seek what lies below,
Unearthing bits of sun and waning moon.
I conjure wind and breath of long ago
And wreath myself in ancient scent of bloom.
Released, reprieved from weak and fragile shell,
I relinquish earth to dance among the elves.
Glory be for fleeting things For fractious winds that shred
the tips of clouds
racing
Helter-skelter
across the blue.
For swift sparrows that flit
Lickety-split
from twig to limb to leaf to sky.
For puff of dandelion fluff
and zing of dragonfly wing.
Fleeting things please us,
Tease us,
Appease our need
To achieve the sky.
I dreamed a dream of frosted trees,
Staunch beside
a lacy stream.
-of foxes stirring
and redwings blurring-
Bunnies furred with
winter deep.
And flutter of flakes
to glaze my sleep.
Let me slip beneath the lucid blue
to stay among the liquid clouds
that seep and strew
below the reeds.
I’ll wrap my ribs in wisps of white,
and bathe my feet in mare’s tail brume,
Then soak in stolen sky.
Let me bask
inside this pearly pond
where light pours
sweet and slow.
a prism
to refract my soul.
They defy our grasp,
stretching the boundaries so thin between what they are and what they aren’t
- able and incompetent, brilliant and bewildered, needy and transcendent-
that they create absence
rather than essence.
They suck the air out of the room.
They impress and disappoint, comfort and excoriate,
with only a gesture
or a word,
often in the same moment.
We adore them, we hate them, we imbue them with our own sense of self –
interpreting their otherness through the lens
of our own vulnerability.
They can be their own undoing.
Or ours.
Who are they?
We know them when we see them.
They’re under our skin.
-Consistently inconsistent, unfathomably difficult, teetering between brilliance and defiance, differently motivated.
Sweetly confused.
Flayed with sensitivity.
They can be defiant, depressed, disorganized, determined.
Breath-takingly kind, deftly aware.
Whatever they are,
it’s never what we expect at the moment.
Misunderstood.
In the space between,
in the space of a sigh,
they will
upend,
realign,
reconfigure,
reimagine
and resurface
our world.
What then?
We carry sun within us, beam by beam.
We hum and puff with liquid wheezing light -
We kindle flames afire in borrowed gleam,
Reflected glow on loan from cloudless sky.
We shelter dark within us, sigh by sigh-
Protective urge to keep our worry close.
We cloak ourselves in dimly shadowed night,
And hide inside delicious dull repose.
We cradle warmth within us, spark by spark.
And stoke our dreams in rosy tinted rays.
We conjure heat from embers ashy dark
And flee between the turning nights and days.
We straddle dusk and dawn in frantic haste,
And douse the sun and drink the dark, a waste!
A fragile sweetness lingers slow and deep
And teases toes and tongue and blood between
With hints of yeast and milk that warms our sleep,
The tastes that sing our restless dreams serene.
Forgotten scents arise in wistful waves
To flood our veins and cream our bones with balm.
We swoon beneath maternal soft embrace -
Indulge the bliss of deep remembered calm.
Released, revived, refreshed, we breathe anew
And trail our nascent hopes and dreams behind.
In want, we savor sips of childhood brew
And drink with aching thirst that sucks us blind.
And yet, as aching needs emerge, we know
Remembered ease digests forgotten woe.
A-flutter amidst the Sunday sippers,
She twitters and twits, her eyes a-gleam.
With trembling pats and bashful titters,
She gathers cheer on hummingbird wings.
She alights between the cups and chatters,
Her head a-tilt, her faith and love ablaze,
To perch, alert, embracing laughter
Erasing tears in wispy breaths of grace.
Her wings have folded, her soul distilled
Yet memory shimmers as wet eyes glimmer
Beside the crumbs and drips and spills
Within these sacred walls, her spirit lingers
- A pause, a pulse, a moment’s grace to fill.-
Spin and drift and catch the wind
against a flat unbroken sky.
Sweep clean the attic of your mind;
- Refresh the glimmer in your eye
Stay aloft among the crows
That crease the wind and shatter calm.
Ride the sky and listen close
And open your throat to joyous song.
Then fling your arms to reach the stars
And dance amid their ancient light
Invite their glow into your heart,
And gather forth your inner might.
If I could muster faith enough
To trust in god with simple grace
I’d free my soul to soar aloft
And greet the angels face to face
But I believe in sun and rain,
And trust in birds and buzzing bees.
I pray before the restless wind
And raise my praise up to the trees.
