my inner poet
stomps up the coffee house
stairs- half hour late
she’s Hologram Girl
Cindi Sunshine- all my
Superheroes wearing
jeans
combat boots
Lennon glasses
a thousand emerald eyes
she thumps on my
table stares deep
and demands in her
Jersey Girl voice
“So what am I now –
your therapist?
you gotta focus
that kaleidoscope
brain – too scattered
too much Word-Shine”
she starts dancing –
downstairs – drums beat
a light show wails
Of course, I’d be delighted to write another poem. Here it goes:
Beneath the chorus of the azure sky,
Where sunlight dreams and shadows lie,
There, a river weaves its silver thread,
Through the heart of the valley, it’s led.
Whispering tales to the willow’s ear,
Kissing stones that have stood for years,
Caressing the roots, the river runs,
Under the watchful gaze of the sun.
In its gentle murmur, a melody thrives,
A testament to nature’s vibrant lives,
Dancing fish, the heron’s graceful flight,
In the river’s song, they find their light.
Upon its surface, the world is mirrored,
In its depths, life’s secrets are stored,
An ancient pact of sun and rain,
In each ripple, it’s retold again.
The river dreams in shades of blue,
In its dream, life’s rhythm ensues,
From mountain’s heart to the open sea,
It carves its path with patient glee.
As day surrenders to the velvet night,
The river sings under the moon’s soft light,
In the silence, it hums and flows,
Where it will lead, nobody knows.
In its perpetual journey, the river finds,
The pulse of life, in its twists and winds,
For each of us, like the river, flows,
From whence we come, no one knows.
But in our hearts, like the river’s song,
The love for life, vibrant and strong,
Flows endlessly, like the river, we,
Are part of this beautiful mystery.
Fare thee well now -Grateful Dead
In Woodstock, sacred
space, I’m confused (scattered
like lost words) for a moment
when they ask
where I’m from (black, glistening,
it tastes like beets).
I forgot prejudice (nothing
to tell now). Misunderstanding,
I don’t attempt to explain
what took me years (let your life
proceed by its own design) to learn.
They don’t need to know
what I know. Let them
assume (let the words be yours,
I’m done with mine).
Under a patchwork
Of infant-leafed trees,
With May-whispered breeses
About her face–
Overhead sunlight triggered
Shadow dances on the surface
Of the creek’s water,
With rolled up pant legs
On unsure and bared feet
In inch-worm-lock scoots,
She waded
With hands out stretched
In a shaky ballance
A tedious search
Of a for-certain trail
Hidden under the spring silt-muddled currents.
We have a battalion of six tiny goldfish
schooling like battleships in our little pond.
(We rescued them from a muddy hole,
our neighbor’s pond that sprang a leak and died.)
They swim on their sides, wave their fins at me,
and wink – a shot of courage to face the day.
One of the old-timers I cut grass for
summers to make money for gas and lps,
after I’d bagged all the clippings
and hauled the bags to the curb
would invite me to sit on a patio chair
and pour me a glass of cool water
out of a clay pitcher
and offer me a peppermint
in its cellophane wrapper.
I’d be miserable hot, shirt soaked with sweat,
wanting to get on to the next lawn
or get down into the woods
at the end of the cul-de-sac
where I could sneak a cigarette,
but he’d ask me plans for my life
or share tidbits of history he’d picked up
back when he was a teacher
at a university.
I’d work that peppermint around in my mouth,
the disk dissolving, coating
with its crisp burn, listening or answering
depending on the moment,
never going too deep into my own life,
for to do so felt like giving him something
that hadn’t been earned,
and also because the path before me,
overgrown and dense,
ran straight into the blinding sun.
When there was nothing to say,
we’d sit in the shade, old and young,
amid the smell of cut grass and wild onion,
admiring the cleanly edged walkway
the gentle grade, and watch hungry sparrows
come to the clipped lawn
to hunt desperate brown moths
that had the roof sheared off their home.
