Day 5 - 30 poems in 30 days

Polaris

 

Row toward Eden

through futile winds

across the seas.

 

No compass, no chart,

Polaris our skin

we draw to ourselves.

 

Luxurious hearts

keen in the night

moor in wild ports.

Day 4 - 30 poems in 30 days

When Words Fail

 

You are the red bandana

tied around my mouth,

so it can’t talk about hands,

yours and mine.

 

I am a dry fountain pen

thirsty for ink,

for morning and night,

for everywhere between.

 

We are rocks

tumbling in the riverbed,

smoothing ourselves

to lie in quiet in other laps.

 

Where will our feet land

after the days of rain,

after our daily bread,

after everyone else is gone?

Day 3 - 30 poems in 30 days

Small Bend In the Road – Unincorporated

 

Five days a week I drive the same highway

east in morning, west in evening

but today is Friday – I’m working from home

and I miss that speck on the map

named Thursday, West Virginia.

 

It’s just a building now,

pale green frames around

two windows and the door,

bright green awning across the

porch that spans the front.

 

A bench still waits

below the right window,

big boards beneath the left,

as if repairs are to be made,

as if this might someday be more.

 

What’s is like to always live in Thursday,

perpetually stuck in day five?

No Monday, Saturday, no day of rest,

always waiting for what is to come,

knowing only what was, is past.

 

Is there a lesson here?

Is this the birth of mindfulness,

of being in the present?

Is this where the guru of meditation

waits for each of us?

What The Heavens Know

 

How often we forget.

While it waits, patient

as dark molasses

for December biscuits

that rise and brown

in hot ovens.

 

That public sky

above our daily tasks,

watches us spin

and turn in turbulence

as we invent new stories,

new myths to fit our lives.

 

Before molten memory,

gods and goddesses

filled with lust,

stirred the cosmos.

Fought their wars,

birthed other deities.

 

Listen, this firmament

has old, old tales to tell.

How we rose from water;

How elements of stars fell

formed bones, scales, flesh;

How something walked

across this land.

 

In the shadow of deep night

sometimes we pause,

maybe we pray,

maybe we praise.

Maybe we remember

why the sea forever calls us.

2015 - 30 poems in 30 days

To Travel A Two-Lane West Virginia Road

 

Early April, headed East

sounds           so glorious

at 6:30 AM, while

everything is still dark;

raucous bird songs

thick in your ears;

a little dew or even

frost on the windshield.

 

To drive into morning

is not what you expect.

Oh, it begins – lovely,

light stalks the air, slow

as that tabby after a field mouse;

Colors bloom, leisurely

as those July morning glories

on the old porch trellis.

 

But you have forgotten,

in this dawn with no clouds,

that the sun does rise.

You top the hill – there she is

blindingly beautiful!

You can’t see the road, other cars,

or the big bronze Guernsey

on the berm of the road.

Day 30 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

National Poetry Month – Farewell

What a great time!

Everyday a new poem
flung out to the universe
let loose, to settle
on our shoulders – tongues –
in the corners of eyes.
Things we thought unsayable
coalescing into a great swell
across fields of sorrow and joy.
Memory planted – rooted
like sycamore, oaks, pine,
into our consciousness,
rising up to light us all.
I’ll miss the shared poems
of friends – words from
writers new to me,
this sharing, this long luscious ride
in the pony cart of life
along the highway of free-verse,
rhyme, poignant prose and haiku.
Though this month is gone
we will remain faithful
to the things which move us.
We’ll come together again
pen on paper scratching
to define ourselves.
Until next April
may the metaphors be with us,
every one.

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.

Day 26 - 30 poems in 30 Days

Music Brings Me Home

Here is the music where I belong

grandfathers and aunts strum
an old-time song,
hands clap time,
laughter rolls up amid the crowd,
leather-soled shoes upon the floor,
familiar tunes, some quiet, some loud.

Now Dave and Geri bow down an old modal tune

that wrings my heart calls forth
Grandma’s laughter beneath the moon,
Papaw’s fiddle on the shelf,
family food, sweet and warm
honeyed tea and lemonade chillin’
and out-back everyone’s a’playin’.

Then here comes Ginny and Kaye,

syrup throats let loose, like I would pray,
ballads and hymns that framed my youth,
taught me what was right, 
perfect harmony that warns
big dangers everywhere and how
sometimes love can be a gruesome sight.

Oh, I am coming back tonight –

the chords of G, and C, and E
float out across the dome of evening
land in my ear, my lap, my life,
wrap the shawl of music
‘round my shoulders – Hallelujah sisters
This is the music which brings me home.

Day 25 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

When You Expect it Least

The fire sputters a gentle song

in early evening darkness,
turns and falls into itself.

There will be rain tomorrow

but tonight another split log
yields to the lick of flame,
throws shadow and light
into this late April evening.

We laugh, pass the bottle,

tell another story
so true it’s hard to believe.

We hum our own lullabies

to the glowing coals that
arouse the still cool ground,
warms our hands and
memories of other evenings.

Later we lie down alone,

dream of touchable skin,
that could kindle into flame,
blaze our own incandescent light
across all is left of our time.

Day 24 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

The optional prompt was to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like.  I only have one wall but it’s the content that matters:

Souls of April

I heard a single morning bird

Just before 5 a.m.  So bright,
un-shy to be the first to greet
the wall of another April day.

I’d spent the night in my day clothes

deep in the sweet bed of fiction.
Both found and lost as a 12 year old
in their last summer of mystery.

I’ll drive 300 miles today as another writer’s

language bounces inside my metal carriage,
rings my ears with sweet description,
places I have known or dreamed about.

At 5:30 a few more birds joined the chorus

and by 6:00 the air was full with songs
no cage or prison cell could restrict.
Oh, what luxury this life has given now.

Day 23 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) from NaPoWriMo - Find a poem in a language you don’t know, and translate it into English based on the look of the words and their sounds. – I chose a German (because I don't know German) poem Wandrers Nachtlied by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  I did find it interesting that when I looked up the English translation it spoke of hills and trees and woods.

Dark Vagrants

Under alien hands
Fast the ruin
Created foreign lands
Pure dung
Beneath our mountain hips
Vulgar strip mines
Stripped vistas bare
Rude in morning light.

Here is the original German version:

Wandrers Nachtlied II
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Über allen Gipfeln  
Ist Ruh,         
In allen Wipfeln       
Spürest du   
Kaum einen Hauch;           
Die Vögelein schweigen in Walde.         
Warte nur, balde     
Ruhest du auch.

Day 22 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Today’s prompt was to write a children’s poem – Since today was busy I gave it a quick try - I followed (sort-of) the nursery rhyme format and came up with this:

Fighting

There once was a girl, there once was a boy

And each one has a brand new toy.

He didn’t want his, she didn’t want hers,

She’d rather have his, he’d rather have hers.

But they both were too stingy to figure it out

They argued and tussled and began to shout.

They quarreled and crumbled and started to fight

Then Momma walked and set things right.

She picked up both toys as quick as a wink

And then they were gone in one quick blink.

Now here is the girl and here is the boy

And neither of them has even one toy.

For Momma said fighting, you must not do

For it only results in both of you blue.

So come now my children and follow this rule,

You must not fight, you must never be cruel.

Day 21 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Dream of New York City

Never been to New York City.

Not exactly,
well once, trying to get to Connecticut,
on a freeway we were lost
but Ron said “you’d better look now
‘cause you’ll never come here with me again”.

I thought I “always” wanted to go

be anonymous
on a street of thousands
cloth myself, oh so fashionably,
a pair of red high-heels clicking on the sidewalk.
Wander into the Flatiron Lounge.

Sip a cocktail (or seven) with Kim Cattrall

discuss the pleasure of
an elegant 12^th floor apartment,
complete with sex in the city,
my breasts resplendent – no curtains on the widows,
to come to the thrum of a sleepless place.

But, my friend, I’m here,

black Sketcher tennis shoes,
silent on the wooded path,
my favorite jeans, the ones with the hole I patched
(because I’m not ready to give them up)
an iron-on blue star right on the thigh

above where my next tattoo will go.

Reliable denim guards my legs, ankles, genitalia.
I drink from a shaded spring,
talk with the oriole, a big voice tree frog,
gage the board feet of sycamore and beach,
pillow my head on white tipped moss.

I know the twigs and fern
as well as they know me,
listen to the hum of morning as
it sings its earthen chant
into my blood, into the familiar river
into my womb.,

Day 20 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

What This Day Brings

The first Monday

after the first Sunday
after the first full moon
after the vernal equinox.

This day brings

the good china, clean
and stacked on the table
beside iridescent glasses,

folded lace table cloth,

a potted Easter Lily
white as tomorrow,
pure as our memories of the dead.  

Day 19 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

The Banquet of June

By nine-thirty the dew is dry.

He goes out to the green yard,
cuts grass, trims the fence lines
pulls weeds from a flower bed.
But his mind is stays inside
wrapped around a cotton dress
white in the shadowed rooms,
her supple sway
amid morning chores.
her torso
pale as April legs.
At noon she calls him in.
He pauses, kisses three rose buds,
climbs the steps,
opens the screen door
ready again for her feast.

Day 18 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Lacewood

The last time you didn’t listen to me

I was talking about the river
and that old sycamore tree.
How all winter I offer
prayer-ties to this touchstone
while she guards the dark water.

It is spring now, I feel her stir,

draw up from root, to limb, to branch
the assurance of another leafing season.
No direction, instruction, distraction,
no “I’m too busy” – just her
gentle patience in soft morning light.

But you weren’t listening

off on some quiet journey of your own.
Preoccupied with mail, coffee,
the evening news.
Wandering the caverns of
the empty work pages of life.

What I wanted to say was

I’m still here, that I long to plough  
that deep unnamed place
from which my sap still rises, flows,
my skin still sheds and
my hands still bud with poems.

Day 17 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

Draft #1 - I used the prompt to write a poem in which you very specifically describe something in terms of at least three of the five senses and an older prompt from Sacred Way Poets Workshop - Write a poem using all three of these – “dancing, a pitch-black room, and the smell of lilacs”  

Drawn From The Smell of Lilacs

This pitch-black room is darker than that cave

deep under an eastern meadow,
which holds the dull fecal scent of decay
mixed with full nostril odor of old damp earth.

Where 23 years ago I brought my children,

their glossy checks, straw-strewn hair,
worn scuffed shoes, and torn play clothes,
their hesitant eyes which grew
round and large when all light left.

My daughters smooth hands, now far away,

red and chapped from years of dishwater,
bound by the rings of their days,
their soiled cuticles, dark from
tunneling their own lives.

I am drawn again to the darkness

unknown above ground,
the lure of a flowing stream
which sings an old amniotic lullaby
I can almost remember.

Still, even without light,

I somersault at noon,
swallow the salt of gone years,
bless the days still left for me,
dance to the rhythm of lilacs.

Day 16 - 30 Poems in 30 Days

How Will You Remember Me

I don’t want to be a memorial bridge,

just a name for a passage over water.

Not white cross beside the road,

a reminder that someone died.

I wish to be a poem

that someone memorizes, or

creases carefully

to carry in their pocket.