Day 29 - 30 Poems In 30 Days

(written after misreading “The Redress of Poetry” by Seamus Heaney)

The Red Dress of Poetry

Oh, let us flaunt our poetry.

Dress it in something slinky or
something soiled and inky.
Let us read in quiet bedrooms,
in crowded subways,
down by the fishin’ hole.
May we press it in our mouths
till it becomes diamonds
we hang from our ears.
Simmer it in the stew-pot of words
we’ve praised and cursed
till it becomes sustenance –
wheat free – gluten free
or banned by the FDA.
Carry it in in our silk purses,
in our sow’s ear pockets.
Be not ashamed ­– wear it
to the laundromat, the post office,
dress it up in something
that can’t be missed,
something to remind us
of living, of dying, of blood-shot eyes,
of the stars from which we came.
Let’s go out-on-the-town everyone
just to wear the red dress of poetry.

Day 28 – 30 Poems in 30 Days – Haiku counts - I think?

Elysian Fields

 

Will I be a blessed dead?

Write poems forever

in the meadow of beauty.

Day 27 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

The Women Gather

The girls (women now), come home again.

Here where our fathers and mothers
gathered love and laughter
plentiful as the eggs Grandma
used as an excuse to marry our Grandfather
when she was 15.

This is the land our parents hoed,

toiled for sustenance.
Lived by milk from a single cow,
the drought or plenty of summer gardens,
mornings of more chores,
nights beneath home-made quilts

Here where they hired themselves out

for maybe a dollar a month
to support their mother,
widowed when baby Glenn was two,
illiterate because she was female

What ties us together 

cannot be contained in this poem.
It’s about blood,
about Hill Grover Cemetery,
our names carved on stones.
The coming together

to honor something imperceptible

yet solid and unbreakable.
Though miles and our own families
separate us daily we gather again
just to breathe together - the same air
as our mammas and our papas.