Posts for June 16, 2025 (page 10)

Walking through cedar wood
You’re around me
not even touching
a cloud of strawberry
and soft and
l   o   v   e   r
whispered through trees
a wind quiet enough
over gabled roofs
so nobody could ever hear

Ahead, a stream
glittering like broken glass
a bridge of rotted wood
I guess we’re at an impasse

Will you cross with me?
Wade through
as I warm your side?

Is it ok?
It’s what I want now
someone to squish the bugs
pitch the tent

I am waking up by myself
You’re off, packing pots and pans
every pale morning, until one day
maybe all I’ll see is a trail of boot prints
turned back the way they came

and I’m still going forward
the wide green world
washing over and through me
impossibly, a breath
filling me to bursting
Looking out at distant yellow windows
lit, accompanied, alive
I will have to learn to not be alone.

In the midst of weeds and grass
at Mamaw’s house
I found Lady’s Slippers.

Pink, purple, smooth and strange.
They didn’t seem to belong
in the landscape all around them.

Delicate and beautiful.
I imagined fairies were safely tucked
down inside their lovely pouches.

Mamaw worked in her garden
even in a skirt.
The old cellar filled with jars
and tastes I’ll never find again.

Her dark hair always pinned
and brown eyes twinkling
at the sound of babies laughing.

Hands so strong
they churned out butter and biscuits.
But so gentle when a knee scrape
needed her salve.

Monday Morning Migraine:

Growing up in a family of eight,

A month of poems.
Fantastic, I thought;
I have so many swirling, bubbling streams 
    conscious and unconscious
looking for an outlet.
A torrent of passion and frustration and heartache at the source
somehow as reality crested the waterfall edge
I dried up.

I search for the words
to carry all of this somewhere beyond me
rather than slowly drowning every cell of my body
in the rising tide
of my decision. 

I have spent so much time dreaming of you, 
expecting you to find someone else to marry and have kids with. 
The dreams of you and me made me happy,  
even while I had no faith in them ever coming true. 
Now that I suddenly got you, 
reality is like being high on the best drugs I’ve ever done. 

I’m so terrified. 

Not of the future I want with you,
but of my own ability to fuck shit up and lose you again. 

My guess is that I’ve fallen so hard, 
I’ve almost forgotten my commitment issues. 

Through my open window,
Darth Vadar breathes from nearby—
the death-rattle of a voyager,
guttural gasps,
marking journey’s end.  

We’ve watched their silent descent
from our window looking east,
progenitors of zeppelins long gone,
making landfall,
seeking empty desert—
spaces now fewer
as the city encroaches.  

Six old guys
marveling like children:
the highlight of our day.

I, try, I do.
I’m not perfect, same dances come up
if ignored you push even more
foul venom spewed from your mouth over a space for a car? what for?
I try, I do, but why?
you can’t be pleased
the toddler in your brain, 
rips me to shreds and i just sigh…………….
 

me to shreds and blame me for more  

In Covington, back in the day
Everything made perfect sense
The rules were clear, the work was fun
Now we worry about what to call the
Female adaptation of the “groin grab”
(safety harness jargon)
The only helmet you ever saw was the welder’s 
We’d get right to it, bear it. grin it, demolish it

Now I retreat from it, can’t understand it
Can’t keep up the pace
But something is coming in the back door for me
I can hear it if I don’t listen too hard
I can see it but only in the periferal
I can begin to understand if it’s kept simple
And so I listen for it; a crow, a truck on the road
A bug bongs on the screen door, silence

I’m tempered by years of fire
Now I’m sanguine, can let it all go
Light rain pitter pats on the tin roof
I feel its cool breeze at the window
Now it comes to an abrupt end
Silent again this evening of the present
What is that though, coming in the back door
It’s for me I know, something more

I mingle with friends of all sorts
and folks I’ve never known. But
carefree under a broad and loving
roof we engage in healthy ruckus,
exchange more than a cliché. We dig
fingers into pockets we thought
empty, bring out a common 
thread or two, binding these
unrelated lives, making
from flour’s tasteless powder
a moist and wholesome bread.