Posts for June 10, 2021 (page 7)

The brush of adventure
How I long for its swift embrace
It’s that feeling of swords, ships and cannons
The very hill of a roller coaster

Your face hitting the wind
Water surrounding you and loving you

When it arrives, people are never the same
Something changes in the mind

Instincts and secret pleasures are unlocked

The treasures foretold of ancients come flowing in
And we dance naked and innocent in it
Allowing it to make us young again

So many souls search for the Fountain of Youth
When it is already within them

To live is the greatest adventure
With time not guaranteed to us
The earth is our playground

Come. Let us be free. 

The rain will drive customers
in or away; you can’t predict.
Make the muffins anyway.
Play Fleetwood Mac radio.
If it’s Monday, the milkman
will drip in toward the fridge
and tell you good morning even
if he really doesn’t mean it.
He may even buy a scone.

An amalgam and jumble
of disparate threads.

Woods whispers
moon dust
silk memories
lonely threads
artistic passion

sorrow and savoring
fluttering hope
lavender longings
lover’s kiss
muffled bravado

snippets of song
Honeysuckle love
delicious jazz
sonorous song.

The sum of my growing up
growing down.

-Sue Neufarth Howard

Cheep, trill, peep, caw, chick-a-dee, dee, dee
Cheep, trill, peep, caw, chick-a-dee, dee, dee
Cheep, trill, peep, caw, chick-a-dee, dee, dee

Shriek

Flap, flutter, fly, flee

Silence

At some point, the bigwigs in Nashville decided
too much twang would turn off the customers
now used to the bland, the clear, the sweeping
pop voices. Between the yelp and holler,
the growl and lilt, the fiddle and banjo, the flat-
out proclamations–something had to go.
Thank you,, Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, 
for celebrating the off-beat tones, the melting-pot
roots–making a home under the umbrella,
bluegrass, where folks could make these
queer and country sounds.

                           from the middle
                              of the green flat top
                           flock and kill-
                           down in the dip
              where noone can
               see us now
               see us now
                     up hollow.

Digging a coffin-size square in the red
clay yard for the woman I barely see,
imagine me lying in it, eyes closed,
recapitulating my life in dreams.  

Her husband asks why I dig his wife’s hard
yard. I mumble it’s humble to do good
deeds. Bullshit he snickers, you ‘gentleman’
but doesn’t mind I borrow his shovel.  

My careful, steady work widens the hole
the length and breadth of a kitchen garden  
that I’ll fill with rich organic matter,
but who will till and plant it? I don’t know.  

Every act is infinite and discrete
touching lives of people we never meet.  

I  cannot see the lake below the cliff.
The overlook is dressed in fog white. The only tree
visible has a red fox squirrel fleeing a territorial
grey squirrel chasing, jealous of his female poets.

Many times I have come here to use the cliff
as a spring board to past relationships, seeking poetry,
and this morning is awash with editorial
finches singing solos, choir notes, duets.

Pinky, a nickname for her skin tones, resides
in this vastness as white as an empty page
moans rather than speaks in rhyme.
I recreate an image of her face.

Emptiness returns. It is she who hides
rather than perform front and center on this stage
that is my life. I sit for a long moment,  time
enough to remember how in our naked embrace

she always refused to open her eyes.

Most mornings I wake up with an explosion
of thoughts ping-ponging in my brain.
And I’m not always sure where to go first,
other than to let my dog, Rose, out to pee.
I often grab my journal, begin to jot the ideas down,
never knowing which ones will bloom.
The hydrangea beside the garage has not bloomed
since 2017 when I bought my home.
I have to wonder
what’s made her decide to explode.

She became lost
amid the repeating lines
of the infinity mirror
she ran back and forth
seeking the way out
from its intricate lattice
of echoed reflections
even her shrieks of despair
were emulated in the light
between the silver surfaces
trapped within the confines
of the visual tunnel
she was one, then two
then four, then sixteen
until she metamorphosed
into the sterling eternity