The following poems were posted during Lexington Poetry Month, which is the month of June.
To find any specific poems, or more information about the #LexPoMo Writing Challenge, please check out the following links:
When the moon says hello,
She’s confessing her deepest thoughts.
Spilling realizations, truths, and wisdom into the stars,
Painting her life before them,
Stroking between the transitions of life,
Dragging the brush with colors to be seen,
Just
for the hope
that she’s understood by daylight.
WE LET
The mountains never promised ease,
nor fields of gold or gentle breeze;
they gave us stone and stubborn clay,
and taught us how to find a way.
The creeks would rise with angry rain,
then leave behind their marks of pain.
The hills would slide, the rivers roar,
yet still we’d mend each broken door.
Our fathers bent beneath the ground,
where daylight’s song could not be found.
With blackened hands and aching bone,
they carved out wealth they’d never own.
Our mothers stitched by lantern’s glow,
made little stretch and children grow.
They turned one loaf to feed us all,
and stood the tallest when we’d fall.
The whistle cried before the dawn,
while frost still dressed the fields and lawn.
The lunch pail swung with quiet grace,
as hope was written on each face.
The young would leave with dreams packed light,
chasing distant city lights.
Some found fortune, some found pain,
some longed for home and came again.
The empty schools, the weathered stores,
the silence of forgotten doors—
each tells a tale the wind still knows
of lives that bloomed where little grows.
We’ve buried kin beneath old pines,
marked only by the passing times.
Their stories live in creek and tree,
in every ridge and memory.
Still Sunday hymns climb mountain air,
a faithful answer to despair.
Though roofs may leak and pockets thin,
the richest wealth has dwelled within.
For hardship is a faithful guest
who seldom grants a night of rest.
Yet grit is born where trials stay,
and hope still finds another day.
The world may pass these hills on by,
not seeing what beneath them lies;
but every scar upon this land
was shaped by an enduring hand.
So let them measure worth by gold,
by towers high and fortunes told.
We’ll count our riches differently—
in family, faith, and memory.
For though the mountains bear our tears,
they’ve also held us through the years.
And when our names are lost to time,
they’ll echo softly through the pines.
As long as ridges kiss the sky,
and whip-poor-wills still sing nearby,
the hearts that hardship could not bend
will call these mountains home… til end.
Lavender Light Lingering…
Licorice Longing
Liberates Languishing Love’s
Liminal Limerance
Eighty-two thousand
four hundred twelve words
in the fourth revision:
a scorched Midwest landscape
imagined, written, edited, rewritten,
and then, like a barn riddled
with rotten beams, abandoned.
Young Luna left alone
poised at the gate left ajar—
Rising action swirls in my memory
like shingles in a tornado;
falling action settles thick on barren fields
edged with hardscrabble hangers on
honeysuckle, chokecherry,
plastic debris, tiny rodents, ants,
beetles, skinny scavengers
a few lizards eke life
from exhausted soil I once seeded
with hopes, watered with gentle feedback,
plot raked up stone by stone, pulled apart
fortified with better dialogue
and still
lost to drought, after all that.
Even now, I think of Luna, at that gate.
Sometimes as I walk (all these years later)
a hawk circles above, broad-winged cruciform
shadow dogging my path,
like a dark angel
watching for breath in the stillness.
Anne Burrell taught me how to handle a knife.
She never stained my finger red,
cause I made sure it was tucked right.
My family used to point at the TV,
jokingly stating, “You belong on the show.”
I used to serve hockey puck cookies.
The pork chops were cooked twice to death.
The smoke alarm warned me that someone else should do the cooking.
But Anne Burrell taught me how to chop an onion.
Keep the hairy end. Slices. Sticks. Dices.
She frightened everyone on the kitchen floor. The white hair,
her sharp tongue, the look that could instantly boil water.
I would have hated being on her team. I only watched because of Anne Burrell.
Now her red apron is passed on to another,
but they wear it differently. It’s not the same.
My cooking is not the same. Slices. Sticks. Dices.
No one points at the TV anymore, telling me that
I belong on the show.
A skeleton in black armor approaches astride a white horse
holding a black flag emblazoned with the Mystic Rose of life.
The Emperor lies dead underfoot, the crown tumbled to the ground.
To attempt to resist is to be immediately overcome.
The Hierophant stands with hands outstretched in prayer.
To negotiate is futile.
On her knees, the maiden surrenders.
To gracefully accept is to allow change to happen as it should.
The child faces the skeleton, offering a white rose.
To embrace change without fear is to accept the gift in it.
This card does not signify physical death but
transition, change, movement to a new phase.
In the distance the Sun shines
between the towers of imagination.
This is a mystical death.
This is the death of the present self
to reach higher consciousness.
