Posts for June 25, 2023 (page 7)

Before thy years did come to be
‘ere the herald star shone
thy mother didst choose thy name
and where wouldst be thy throne

Thy father did in battle fall–
‘twas gone ‘ere thou wast bourne
his last words spoke, just ‘ere dawn
keep my son from scorn

The library and records did I keep
and sought to teach thee well–
in time, revealed the ancient tomes
and did the secrets tell

And so, my prince, the day did come,
manhood on thy shoulders laid,
wi’ thy father’s blade didst thou sing–
his enemies all did pay

purple pen’s ink runs
dry on journal’s final page
consequence or fate

Please use
Your instincts, emotions, prayer,
Time
(But not too much)
To wrestle and record your thoughts
To study reliable resources
Then stride in a chosen direction
With truth and consideration.

Please know
It’s okay to make mistakes.
Progress is the goal.
Perfection is an impossible illusion
And even bad choices
Can bring beauty and betterment
When you wonder over wallow
In the wrong.

Please trust
You
Your own self
Your ability to shine
Or roll with the punches
On any path.
Your mama’s love
Lives around every curve.

Always, Mommy

I have always known
I am barely visible, a muted
unfinished painting
moored loose from the dark matter
distracted thinking about
someone’s finger itchy with hate
a place I don’t want to go
a museum of small sadnesses
I heard the world smolder
arpeggiating brokenness
My heart floods around me like water
This is the stunning time of in-between
the feeling of being suspended
like a tightropewalker holding a heron egg
The world opens itself to
putting the knives to sleep
The flame of life leaps
wings open like blue doors
Let the longest day’s light carry you
You are a deep memory
vibrating with contentedness
Step out into the yard of astonishment
Sew the world together with the tender
slow unfolding
of clarity
the path to mending
Sow kindness
with such abandon
in the letterbox of my heart
there is only this
green shimmer of
a distant and half-remembered home

*Cento of lines/phrases from LEXPOMO poems by Roberta Schultz, Linda Bryant, Sylvia Ahrens, Jim Lally, Laura Foley, Sylvia Ahrens, Carrie Elam Spillman, Shaun Turner, Tom C. Hunley, Pam Campbell, Sophie Watson, Coleman Davis, Gwyneth Stewart, Ellen Austin-Li, T. M Thomson.

I made butterflies sing
to find out what is true.  

I thought I did it for me.
I found I did it for you.  

Eight-legged octopus in the deep blue sea,
with tentacles that dance so gracefully.
A master of disguise and a hunter of the night,
it silently stalks its prey in reflective moonlight. 

Eight-legged spider in the fields so green,
with webs of silk spun as if routine.A
patient hunter and a weaver of dreams,
it spins its fate and lives mostly in-between. 

Two creatures, so different yet the same,
with eight legs and appetites untamed.
One in the ocean, one on the land,
both surviving with unique strategies, logic, and no hands. 

I dream of standing 
in a cloud of moths. Luna. 
Emperor. Death’s head. 

murmurs of cicadas fill the morning
on the stippled trail
we surprise a robin
who drops a blackberry
ripples of regret

I’ve been shooing vagrants or varmants out of my garden all this spring
I can’t tell which they are.  It’s dark and I’m near sighted
So sometimes I have to let details go to the devil and just take a guess

We’re out on a walk and I ask: “Was that a robin or a baltimore oriel?”
I could tell if it would just make a sound
But an orangey, brown, reddish flash in a bush – – -?

The biological facts of identification have to be set aside in favor of
The feel of the thing.
Suddenly a bird or mayby last year’s tattered leaf skitters across the lawn

It does get stuck in a bush now and sits there aquivering
But where are its flocky friends
Whoops, off it goes

Further on the walk I am startled by a lump of dirt
It darts across my path from left to right and takes up a position
Just beside a rabbit hole  – – – oh

The wind makes a little tornado out of a pile of leaves
They swirll around my head and get caught in a privit hedge
Now they’re singing in chorous

I’m not as filled with wonder as I should be, 
I mean, fireflies — crazy! — 
floating along toting their own lanterns, 
or the locust tree with its clusters 
of menacing spikes
protruding from the trunk
an evolutionary device 
to keep the giant sloth of the near ice age 
from harvesting its sweet fruit.

Must familiarity bleed out
all amazement? A dozen steady blinkers
on the lawn no more wondrous
than a stop sign? The thumb as mundane
as the arcing stream from a public water fountain?

I’m not sure what’s made me blind,
some trick of the mind, some disease of our era
from which none are immune —
if I were to tell you there is one moon
and one sun, would you look skyward agape, 
or stand there and yawn?