Island of Dreams

Reluctance weighs me down

when light dances

through my happy eyelids

Each bothering moment

pulls me farther

from my safe nest

Where everything works

Where all things are calm

and I am walking

In places where ones

who are no longer here

sit with me a moment

and the empty place inside

Fills once again with their warm light

This safe nest of quilts …

pillows angled properly to hold me

like true love-

where my best answers await

where the cuts from sharp words heal

Where my heart rests

and renews its vow

to bring me through another day

My solitude

My small kingdom

My tiny cottage-

Some days- I can hardly wait

to use my return nightly ticket

to my very own

Island of dreams

Poem 6 of 30… Haiku

Simple Solution

How clear it was when
You said … just change completely
Then – I can love you

NaPoWriMo Challenge-

30 poems in 30 days. Day Five. This is a Ten Word Poem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Old Friend

I saw your life-

beautiful

wild

dreaming

before you changed

Pedestrian Ballet

Steel and glass
Give way to brief glances
Of shimmering water
And concrete corridors
Where another river of dancing beings
travel in metal boxes-
In raw form on legs
On wheels–

Flow
Interesect
Attract

Repel Merge

Synchronised chaos
Ground flying–
like
Bird flocks
Turning
Diving
Undulating
Into L’s and Ubers
Escalators and revolving doors
Clusters change direction together
Then break into smaller groups
And smaller yet
To scatter off alone
No words spoken-
Silent pedestrian ballet

Poem #3 of 30. NaPoWriMo

Soul Sister-For Marylynn

Decades move
Like melting glaciers
Returning us to our ocean source
The stories we share
At our slumber parties
Echo shapes of needs and wants
And how they have changed
And not changed-
From junior high
To senior living-
Hair and boys and clothes and body changes
Grey and men and comfortable shoes and body changes
Half a century of late night whispers

laying out our moments
Like a candy haul
From a lifetime of Halloweens
Spread out on our hotel bedspreads
Here on this Chicago weekend
Sorting out the best bits first
And as the night goes on
We’re down to tossing inedible things
They happened but they do not own us
Soul sister
The one I can hold my world up to and ask
“Do I look weird in this life?”
And she’ll say,
“Oh, hell yes. But, somehow, it looks good on you.”

Haiku

Bluewater Amtrak

Steel snake on the ground

Makes it’s way around the lake

Eats and spits me out

Like I don’t have enough to do…

I’m a sucker for a writing challenge and a friend just posted about the new National Poetry Writing Month: 30 poems in 30 Days. Like it’s older cousin, NaNoWriMo, the challenge is to keep on cranking out writing every day for a month.

A recipe for disaster? Perhaps. This could devolve into Hipster time travelers snapping fingers to bad poems while wearing French berets in 1964.

Tomorrow, I will begin. Poems on a train ride to Chicago. Yeah. I can dig it. Snap. Snap.

The old ways end now

Here is a blank page for me

First step on new snow

Fifteen minute writing exercise. Saturday, December 15, 2018

PROMPT: I Didn’t Realize It Then

… but I was already connected to the world by a much stronger cord than this thin string that holds my spirit to my body.

The urge to look up and let the moon fill me, head to nine year old toes was a primal call. And once the family was sleeping, I would raise the venetian blinds behind the head of my bed and let that wash of silver light pour into my upturned face, there on my pillow- but only on certain days of the year.

I didn’t realize it then but I was feeling seasons and rotations of the Earth; large celestial movements that put the moon high or low in the sky, or- it seemed, not in the sky at all.

I didn’t realize it then but the hours spent high in the branches of my willow tree, letting her sway me back and forth; letting the wind comb my hair in all directions- that I was learning the eddy of wind; microbursts and gales that showed themselves to me in small movements in my Illinois yard- later learning that they move that way all across the planet. And some child on the other side of the globe, in time, might inhale a breath that I had exhaled on the wind while high up in my tree.

I didn’t realize it then, that every moment of my life has been a step, a hop, a stumble, a fall, a rising up again on the road that can only be viewed from the mountain of time we build by living every day.