Category: Poetry

Sometimes, the words just pour and you need to grab some paper to mop it up before others drown in the overflow…

Poetry Day: End of the Season

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For my Northport Dear Hearts❤️
October


I stretch my heart across the land to see if I can hold you all as you drift homeward to your corners~ far away.
I’ve made room for you now inside my ribs

where I can carry your voices

until the trees bloom again

and you return to this northern town

where we move like circus folk –

readying our spaces before the show begins again.

Short, sweet season 

filled with a thousand birds gathered on a wire outside our night windows. 

Gone now

Quiet fills the spaces

where you all just were.

Happy 

to have had this time 

surrounded

In your friendship.

Poetry Day… This Wind

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Bench seat overlooking view down valley, Swaledale, Yorkshire

 

This Wind

 

This wind that is

the time I have with you-

Moves over skin-

Ruffles hair-

Momentarily

Changes the direction the flowers grow-

This moment blowing by

Here and then behind me

Mother- father- decades gone

Children rushing into middle life

I am on this roadside

Still and silent

On this worn waiting bench

No clock to check the time

Noticing everything

Taking mental pictures while I can

One past sixty

Where I’m at-

As I look around at

Moments

Whirling past my feet

Swift as fall leaves

Caught on this wind-

This invisible wind

Of the time I have with you

 

 

 

8.18.15

Poetry Day- Stand Mother’s Day

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nature-balances-herself

 

STAND

 

You stand with us

You, who nurture cities

You, who stand as big sister

You, aunt

You, best friend

You, neighbor

You who nurture the soil and raise up food and blossoms

You who bring creatures home and show them humans can be loving too

You who protect us, heal us, inspire us and entertain us

You who teach us what we need to know

Mothers – all

You stand with us.

 

Poetry Day: My Mistake

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lonely road

My Mistake

My mistake

was not

going down that road

to the place

where I

threw my arms open

to love –

vast, wild and freely given-

it was

in

assuming

that you

had come along

with me.

My Creator of All Things

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After writing a full novel manuscript I find myself only pulling smaller word threads for a while; resting some muscle but keeping it taut with sprints through poetry and essay. It’s another poetry day and I’m feeling like offering up this one to the cyber pyre of anonymous eyes.

 

RS_Eagle_Nebula

 

 

Creator of All Things

 

My Creator of All Things

Is not the playground bully created by religion

Not the God with the small “g” who has a vocabulary

With words like

Hate

Vengeance

Disappointment

Exclusive

Ultimatum

And judgment

~

My Creator of All Things

Needs no words.

To name a thing is to capture it

And stop its evolution towards something more

~

My Creator of All Things

Set a dance in motion a trillion, trillion, trillion years ago

A trillion, trillion, trillion years from now

One second ago

Now

~

Time is a measuring stick designed for tiny human brains

To help us organize events into simple patterns we can understand

~

My Creator of All Things

Swirled the dust of everything into a golden spiral

And I see the signature everywhere

From the perfect turn of my DNA

To the galaxies spinning in dizzying proportions light years across the vastness beyond

~

My Creator of All Things

Swirled the dust of everything

And the dance began, begins, will begin

Throughout the Multiverse

Flung far

Growing

Changing

Evolving-

triggered by possibility

Every possibility

Every choice

Conscious or unconscious

Amongst the sentient and insentient

Everywhere

~

My Creator of All Things

Is the observer

Watching as each speck of dust finds its way around the spiral

And back again to be part of itself

Though it never left

~

My Creator of All Things

Does not require membership

Tradition

Worship

Teams

Armies

Compliance

Sacrifice

Or

Offerings

~

My Creator of All Things

Touches my heart

When I sit in a field of flowers

Looking closely at the perfect design of a

Clover blossom while the bee

moves without hesitation

Knowing its purpose and its path

~

My Creator of All Things rocks me gently

When I feel the earth moving in its orbit

~

I grow

Change

Evolve

And discover the possibilities

Of every choice I make

Consciously or unconsciously

As I dance around the spiral

On my way back to where I began

~

My Creator of All Things is not the school yard bully created by religion

~

My Creator of All Things is the Alpha, the Omega

and everything in between.

~

And I am a microscopic, macroscopic

Vital and relevant part of All Things

∞

Poetry……I’m

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Cathead Bay Michigan

I’m

I’m a Galleria Mall in a National Park,

a French film noir in a grocery store,

art school in the kitchen,

An erotica book on a Wednesday noon,

And a heated debate at 2 a.m.

I’m the cookie baker

trouble maker

heart breaker

claim staker-

I want everything to change

While the good parts stay the same.

I want the freedom of the road

while harvesting the flowers I’ve sowed.

I want a home that feels like love

and all the laughter it’s made of-

I want a soundtrack worth a movie

And then I want to leave behind

A mountain of creations

For my progeny to find.

That’s all.

Poetry Day- America: The Long Dream

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usa night

So, this poem arrived in a dream, intact, and I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down, just like this. There’s music too, but since I can’t write music, its just in my head. I wrote this in 1998 but I think about it every 9/11.

America: The Long Dream

America,

as we awaken from this long dream

we look around to see what’s happening

and wipe the sleep out of our weary eyes.

 

Long ago,

we came from every nation on the earth

our skin is shaded like the mother lands

our eyes reflect the places of our birth.

 

We’ve lived for years a nation under God

but never dared to say which one that was

now deep from sleep a restless voice is heard.

 

Until we see,

we came together here to start anew

and find the likenesses in me and you

we’ll never reach the point where love is true.

 

The purpose of our lives has always been

to learn to love regardless of our skin

 

The God we call out to is all the same.

The only difference is the man made name.

We bow our heads and ask

direction for

our lives again.

 

And in the middle of the darkest night

we hear the whispered voice and see the light

that fills our hearts and somehow makes it right.

 

This is the dawning of a brand new day.

Our turmoil leads us to another way-

to handle change with grace.

 

America,

as we awaken from this long dream

and look around to see what’s happeneing

we see the truth within our open eyes.

We’re standing truly at each other’s side.

Our learning hearts are finally open wide

to let the new day in.

Poetry Day: Word Rescue

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oubliette-st-y-nyll-wales-uk-by-capt-gorgeous-fcc

Word Rescue

I’ll fling my words to you
like fragrant flowers at your feet
your head down again
you might
notice them-
Words like silver death stars to your heart
thrown on still night air
over soft linen
to kill your drowning doubt-
adamantine chain of words
fashioned
down –
to your hand
an escape route
from your perfect oubliette
that you have made
your lonesome home

Poetry Day: Cactus Flower

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cactus flower art

Cactus Flower

Creamy cactus flower
bouquet out of reach
guarded earnestly
there will be no souvenirs
lucid dreaming carries me
off to somewhere else
til I’m half a step removed
a movie out of sync
as what I was and who I am
come close to touching hands
for just one golden moment
time slows in its dance
and then once again
I am standing in that desert
looking at a chance
that the world ahead
held a certain sign
your heart beating next to mine
for a breath or two
it was me and you
then time rushed ahead
regained its bruising pace
in this dreaming place
and I was looking at your face
the same yet different now
silvered round the brow
though eyes will never change
a lifetime passed between
what you meant to me
and who you are to someone else
but for just one golden moment
time slowed in its dance
until what I was and who I am
were almost touching hands –
they left a blossom on my palm
an offering from my past
a single creamy flower
plucked from a cactus tower
message clear and plain-
an exchange for all my rain