21 Sunday Jul 2019
Posted in Poetry
I like to think
it was some great,
cosmic,
gravitational pull,
two spirits,
in proximity,
drawn closer,
meant to be
together.
I mean,
why
this one,
not
that one?
You can feel
the magnetic draw
between two
celestial bodies;
what is that,
if not destiny?
20 Saturday Jul 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Gratitude, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Thankfulness, world
Everyday, I would write a poem,
as if it’s my last poem,
a last letter to a world I love,
love, and hope it means something
to say so, even as I know
it means different to different–
what does it mean,
I hear the world asking,
imploring me to offer proof.
But you’ll have to take me at my word.
A poem a day, a song,
fingers along a rosary,
giving thanks at each bead,
and never running out
of things to be thankful for.
Bead, to bead, to bead:
the sun, the stars, the grass,
rain,
blessings and blessings,
love,
yes, love–
I don’t have to tell you,
or prove it;
you know what it is.
I hope
you know what it is.
26 Wednesday Jun 2019
Tags
Birds, Butterflies, Persevere, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Singing, Souls, Souls Singing, Survival, True Selves, Truth, Wings
Wings of butterflies,
a vague memory
of our wings.
Birdsong. We sing,
as we struggle to hear
the melody. Revive
and persevere.
Strive.
We hear it.
Some days,
it’s easy,
like today:
the journey,
the song,
the singing
24 Monday Jun 2019
Tags
Childhood, Children, Divorce, Forgiveness, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, Surviving, Trauma, Violence
What is the opposite
of the violence
you witnessed,
hostages to our pain,
too young to know
what normal should be?
But tonight,
all three grown,
and at my side,
the peace
of survivors who love
and forgive–
because what else is there
except to love
and forgive.
21 Friday Jun 2019
Tags
clouds, Death, embrace, Flowers, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Love Poems, Manito Park, Petunias, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spokane, summer
I’m writing today in response to a prompt about clouds that I found on the Manic Sylph’s blog.
My fifty-second first day of summer,
is cool and cloudy, the way I like my days,
a high of seventy, and I’ll stroll Manito Park,
while the flowers reprieve from scorchers,
and chaos; mild days are undervalued
in this world, everyone wants to run hot;
can I just sit here and dead-head my petunias
until I die of natural causes, hopefully,
in my sleep, when I’m past my eightieth
first day of summer, or ninetieth—
however old it is when I’m ready to go.
Are we ever ready to leave days like this?
There is always someone left to love,
to smile at, to hold in our just right embrace
while the sun comes up in their souls,
and they, too, long to celebrate
their first cloudy days of summer.
19 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in Poetry
We sat,
chairs close together,
our favorite bistro,
next to the river park,
under shade of roses,
ancient oak, and maple,
admiring the older couples,
wondering,
Which will we be—
someday—
and hoping for the aged lovers
to our left,
still holding hands.
18 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Deer, Fear, Fear of Death, Loneliness, Poem, Poems, Poetry
Sentient soul, to sentient soul,
he realized her panic
when he came barreling
around the corner; sundown,
and their eyes met
for just that second,
she decided to run.
He’d forgot to honk his horn,
thought she’d made it,
then the thud,
like the snap of twig,
a broken limb,
the doe, three-legged,
ran down the ravine.
He was amazed at her speed,
dismayed by his deed,
that couldn’t be undone,
or lightened,
or made right.
In fact, he knew
there was nothing left
except she would die.
He wondered at that,
and how death arrives
when we least expect,
and then, the frantic,
lonesome search for a quiet place
to lay your broken body down,
and the terrible waiting:
last fear, last tight breath,
a final severance from this world
on what had been a beautiful night.
04 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Addiction, Daughters, Flowers, Healing, Hope, Loss, Lotus, Love, Mother Poems, Mothers, Odyssey, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Promises
“The lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them.”
The Odyssey Book IX
Promises, she heard them all,
the call of her mother’s voice,
she wanted to believe:
This won’t happen again, baby.
Maybe, it was okay to trust
for a while, and rise, like a lotus blossom,
above the mud of her addiction,
floating with petals stretched up to the sun.
Somewhere, she thought,
there is a story of a girl whose love could cure,
and pour itself out as an ethereal blanket,
so magical, together at last,
even their bones would long
to float away in the lotus’ song.
18 Saturday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Bird Poetry, Birds, Death, Divorce, Eternity, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Longing, Love, Love Poems, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Rain, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spring, spring poem, Starting Over, Survival, The Universe, Unity, Women's Poems, Yearning
Even the stars are made of this:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
What comes from above,
and we are made right,
our thirst, our life—
forgiveness,
after years of anger;
we finally feel love again.
The earth wreaks well of redemption,
grace permeates the dry ground.
And, the only sound we hear now,
birds,
who sing of starting over,
or, at least that’s what we hear,
like the smell of fresh water,
among grass, and clover:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
17 Friday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birch, Birds, Family, floods, Grass, nests, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Refugees, Starting Again, Starting Over, Survival
Flood warnings, became flooded streets,
a gathering of mud, and other debris,
while in our yard, a branch broke,
from the old birch tree,
and in it, the grass nest,
a family of birds, now refugees.
And, I imagine them searching,
for a place to start again,
free of broken, flotsam dreams,
their past life, falling from this tree,
as the birch continued to bud,
and the grass continued to green.
06 Monday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Centaur, Cowboy, Heart Horse, Horse, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, James T Slavin, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Trail Ride
If waif means thrown away,
we were waifs—
he, an orphan,
me, afraid of the world;
yet together, we were a magical beast,
fleet of feet, pounding ground
with a rumbling beat,
breath joined,
as in lore,
we were centaur,
& maker of the stars,
& shiny things,
creator of our kingdom,
our safe place to run,
abreast of sand, loose rock,
and sun smiling down on it all–
a coronation of soul,
of spirit,
and what will remain,
from that first day,
to the end of our reign.
01 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
arrowleaf balsamroot, Bird Poems, Crows, Gratitude, Happiness, Hog Lake, Hog Lake Falls, Hope, Horse, Horse Poems, Horses, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, Spirit, Spokane, spring poem, Waterfalls
The ground sounds hollow,
an echoing cadence of hoofbeats
follows among ponderosa, & a caw-caw
of wood raven, forest spies tattling
on our prattling happy chatter,
while hawks circle the pool
at the base of hog lake falls,
& balsamroot whispers
about the perfection of it all.
21 Sunday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Creator, Crocus, Crocus poem, Daffodils, Easter, Forgiveness, hyacinth, Lilac, Poem, Poems, Poetry
I am the peace of the creator
of love, breath, forgiveness, savior
rising like crocus, and hyacinth,
daffodils, and the fattening bloom
of lilac; imagine my perfume
in the waking hours of spring.
You will place me in mason jars,
and dream of fireflies, far-off
memories of those you loved
in the vast and moldering green.
16 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
12 Friday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birth, Brook, Children, Courage, Fear of Death, First Born, Freedom, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Mothers, New Soul, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Son, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Strength, Yearning
Some, come into the world as old souls,
like they’ve been here a hundred times,
a bit weary, wise, or jaded, made cautious
by pain & an understanding of human hearts.
But not my son, whose eyes saw the earth
as if he, and it, were just created.
Yes, from first breath he was a wanderer,
like his father in his lust for the world,
possibilities stretched out before him,
no person stranger, no place strange,
a modern day viking making his way
across an infinite, angry sea, with no map.
Unless, music is a map. Song after song,
his heart in waves of hard-plucked strings.
He sang loud, and I wondered how
he could pour himself out in front of crowds.
I see him, even now, upon the ocean,
his wooden ship, the waves, the sails.
09 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Death, Humanity, Letting Go, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Survival, Surviving
We are veterans of dead bones,
products of love, and its loss,
memorizers of last breaths,
and what letting go feels like.
The front line of memory gives way,
what we held in our hands,
dissolves, like water on clay–
muddy water, returning
to muddy ground, then dust;
it is a fate that awaits all of us:
empty arms, encircled of sacred air,
grasping at remnants
of what we valued there.
08 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
aspen, Divorce, Hope, Loss, Love, Masochist, Metaphor, Pain, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Survival, Violence
I searched metaphors to describe you,
the aspen’s branches beating against themselves,
waving for help, like desperate arms,
but that was the work of the wind.
The coyote, who devoured all except the head,
and what appeared to be a shoulder
of our girl cat, and left her among the weeds,
but that was the work of hunger.
Then I thought, maybe the foal,
when they drove off with his mother,
her whinnying, more distant and more distant,
as he crushed his tender body against the rails,
but that was the work of love being torn away.
No, in the end, I came up empty explaining
your helplessness against self-loathing,
our loss of hope, and leaving,
but that, it seems now, was the work of surviving–
surviving the things even poems can’t explain.
07 Sunday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
I surrender myself
to the verdict of trees,
better judges;
the quaking aspen,
shaking its many leaves
at me, or standing quiet,
as I plead my case—
waiting, the hardest part.
Trees, tell me
the verdict
of my life,
the verdict
of my heart
poured out in living,
where wind rattles
the bending branches,
sways the very tops
of our souls,
sometimes, snapping them off
during the darkest storms.
02 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Canada Geese, Cowboy, Freedom, Hope, Horse, Horse Poem, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, River, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spokane, Spokane River, Spring, Survival
We rode dirt and mud,
through standing water,
like ponds, to verify
the sun, and life
of returning things:
Canada Geese, wood ravens,
mule deer, grazing at dusk,
and the river, surging
with the spring run off
of our souls, singing.
31 Sunday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Dear Poet,
Make them listen, with words
that rumble their insides,
and turn them outside,
fearing poets, again,
like they fear truth:
a mirror, a reflection,
a solid witness to a crime.
When you say you’re a poet
make the whole world tremble
when they hear it.
