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.
Evening flight
when sun-ripened wind holds its breath
and hawks lift their wings in praise
to spiral godward on thermals
that steeple the sky with heat
And, dad, fleet of faultless joy
lifts off the grass runway to soar
with the gulls and swifts
in cirrus swirls of pink and crimson pilots’ delight.
that winged conflagration
of endless flickering and twittering
that smothers silence
and strews disintegrating husks of memory
Linger.
Listen.
in the still of leaf weep,
in the stir of the sap spill,
dryads sigh sotto voce
elegy for the
rootless crownless
souls loosened from
dying trees.
untethered,
they seep into my sleep
vining tendrils of regret,
branches laden with longing
foresting my dreams
with the memory of us
sun drunk
with the quickening tang of winesap.
I hear the trees whispering again
A shiver of sound
giving voice to
greening
answering
the thrum of rising sap
in my arteries.
wonder is nascent
filigreeing like capillaries
of willow branches
as they sing,
moth-winged and translucent
tonguing the sough 0f the forest heartbeat
When sunlight
shines inward upon itself
banking its embers
and scattering a flicker of sparks
across the city
burnishing
cathedral spires
discarded hubcaps
and garret windowglass,
moths arise,
untent their stealth wings
and breeze together
in a fluttering hover of
reverence
to kiss the sun’s flame
with blushing proboscis
tasting the nectar of everlasting life.
They were verdant
with unapologetic life
a gabble of petals
tossing in an exuberance
of being, a whirlwind of growing
-of grass stains and skinned knees,
ironed dresses and morning messes
fireflies and mudpies-
Endlessly clamorously vining, trailing, flourishing and burgeoning
Until they went silent,
leaving behind
-empty rooms fragrant
with once mowed grass and overgrown memories.
a tangled treasure of lives and limbs
forever vining and intertwining-
me.
sidewalks stretch between Teslas and fir trees
where paved-over roots expand and erupt,
rippling moss-stippled cement into
uneven hills and valleys
tiny earthquakes carve gnomish mountains
out of pocked pavement
they wild the cityscape
where wee fissures appear,
slender as elf ears,
beneath stumbling feet
and unset the concrete mind
along crayoned faultlines
to release rivulets, spritely streams, of spring-fed dreams
You belong to memory like
tongues belong to peaches-
-rosy skin of ripened sun
distilling laughter
through baubles of juice
that drip to glaze your fingers
-saplings still-
refracting your ripening light
into glittering fragments cold and blinding diamonds.
I hoard color names
-thimblefuls in sheen of Goblin green and Candyfloss,
basketsful -Zephyr pale and straining,
Goosewing tins, teeming,
and thickets of sticky Cobweb sacks-
each bottomless as a she-dragon’s greed
to jewel my soul’s cradle.
they form necklace cliffs and
bracelet streams
of shimmer
to please my Eddystone eye
and soften the gloom of sky
marbling my Tundra mood with ribbons of Daybreak.
Life and death kiss each other
a fibrous intimacy
stitched in our marrow
a bass vibrato serenading
the flora and fauna
of us.
So we love fiercely
briefly
scattering our scent recklessly
fireflies lighting the path to one another.
Lost between daylight and doom
I wander the crow-cleaved skies
their ink winging
rifts along my sightlines
from inhale to exhale
I map the contours of their cacophony,
follow the blade of each wing
that splices the air
a depthless shimmer
teasing my eye
a featherlike glimmer
of the breadth between prey and prayer
Aloft, alone
with engine roar measuring my pulse,
syncopating the whistle of wind to my breath.
Wide sky aerates my eye
and my worries are mapped below -
a calligraphy of river wend
glittering through the propeller’s arc
I pilot this curve of shadow and dapple
Between valleys and creases of
checkpoints plotted,
parentheses inking rivers and roads.
I trace distances, plot minutes between before and after -
my prop parting the approaching clouds,
my rudder dragging the dust of runways long gone
and I breathe, pendulous, light-headed, beneath canvas wings
my compass swinging fore and aft, unsteady, uncertain.
Alone, held aloft by simple faith.
Old age
Tastes of memory,
-of snowflakes
and Guiness -
frosty syrup softening
December gray of hair
and dreams
Warming waning bones.
Wrapped,
Tinseled,
Beribboned and bestrewn
In cloves and wistfulness
Wrinkling sated tongue with
dusk’s sweet grief
A gleam on papery skin
-So thin-
that blood and breath
mingle in a singular sigh
So brief replete.
Tiny Leaves, flit and flitter
spangling the sky with
iridescent applause,
frost tinselling their jazz-hands.
A dainty calligraphy
of delight,
despite
winter’s piccolo glissade
where high-c gales
drift, like sifting leaves,
sliding down in measured cadence
until
bass notes muffle
leaf-strewn ground
And icicles of light
Lift and lilt
in falsetto key,
clinging and singing
between branches of
shredding trees
wind chimes of winter.
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.
