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Bits of Poetry

~ Linda R Davis, Raven of Peace & Poetry

Bits of Poetry

Tag Archives: Women’s Poems

Our Once Shared Existence of Earth, and How the Virus Undid Us

02 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Alone, Chaos, CoronaVirus, Covid19, Death, Divorce, Dying, Fear, Forgiveness, Hate, Healing, Hope, Horses, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spokane, Women's Poems, Yearning

In this season, of triple digit days,

Anger gives way. It withers.

I said, I’m argued out about living,

What it means to be free, and human.

She is right, after all, I’m not an expert.

What do I know about a virus,

Which isn’t informed by the trees,

or clouds, or the way a horse sounds

when it calls to me in the dark?

I can only speak of the heart,

and even that, with authority of one,

my own heart, and how it breaks

To see the growing cries for help. Hate,

A distant thrum, beating, what it means

To be hurt, and hurt back harder.

Is any of this new? Or unique?

But we sought each other anyway,

To stake our claim on our opinions;

The lost way, of friendship and loving,

Something which came easy to us, once,

When we valued living over living,

A life we could touch with our hands,

sending our fingers deep into the dark soil;

To be truly clean meant dirt under our nails,

For weeks, for months, dirt under our nails.

Fuck the New Normal

30 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Chaos, CoronaVirus, Courage, Covid19, Death, Dying, Emptiness, Fear, Fear of Death, Freedom, Life, Loneliness, Longing, Loss, Masks, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Souls, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning


The Clerk

Imagine being nineteen again,
still pimply and awkward,
parroting a script
from behind a plexiglass wall:
Phone number, please, you say,
and imagine her fingers,
typing one in. You hear the click,
clicking of keys on the keypad,
sickening,
music of the dead,
you think, you’re dying.

The Enforcer

You’re maybe a hundred pounds,
just a little thing, whose mask
covers two thirds your fragile face,
and they buried you at the door,
the enforcer, instructed to say—
This door, not that, and arrows,
follow them, follow them,
do like I do, with this cover,
my voice smothered, my soul—

Wrong Way

I’m sure I was just standing there,
leaning over my cart, watching
my daughter shop for cards,
when I heard her voice—
not the enforcer,
but a fellow peruser, like me,
another blank face, masked,
breathless, breathlessly,
you’re going the wrong way,
she said, you’re not following
the arrows, she said,
and her bony, dead finger
pointed down along the ground.
I followed it, and sure enough,
she was right about me:
Rule breaker, careless
spreader of germs.
The shame, the shame,
she would have me feel,
for facing the wrong way,
disobeying.

New Normal

Fuck that. My latest mantra. Fuck that
and fuck that, too.
Even as I do it.
Where’s the humanity in this?
I want to scream.
But who would hear me?
We’re too busy saving lives
by not living, buttressed
as we are behind masks,
She doesn’t even realize I’m not smiling,
Or, does she? Maybe there’s something
of, fuck this shit, in my eyes,
the only part of me she can see,
if she tries to see, but she doesn’t.

The mask isn’t merely the covering
for a mouth, a nose, —
it’s blanket, too, as in a morgue.
Covering the dead. And I know,
my time is coming soon enough,
but I’m not dead yet, covered as I am,
prepared for burial.
Yet, still pounding on coffins,
trying to pull back the heavy veil,
cursing my heart away,

fuck! Someone help us!

–into the emptiness.

The Sweet Smell of Starting Over

18 Saturday May 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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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.

Second Birth

29 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

aspen, Aspen Trees, Beauty, Courage, Death Poems, Dying, Hope, Life, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Spirit, Spring, spring poem, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning

early spring,

a cold aspen, clothed

in soft buds, robed in white,

like ash, born of snow;

to touch her is to quake

with the anticipation

of a thousand leaves

desperate to unfold;

a thousand leaves

desperate

to unfold you.

The Trillium in Gig Harbor

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Afterlife, Belief, Cedars, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Flower Poetry, God, Hope, Infinite, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Trillium, Truth, Unity, Women's Poems

O, Jamie, it’s beautiful—

everything is connected,

she said, before dying.

And Jamie thought of trillium

blossoming beneath musty cedar

at the edge of the sound,

the whole world epitomized

in heart of flowers,

and spirit of ancient,

mouldering trees.

Tammany Creek Road

11 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Calves, Cows, Horse Poems, Horses, Idaho, Lewiston, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Tammany Creek, Tammany Creek Road, Women's Poems

One sorrel horse. Gelding. 

Twenty-two years old.  Grade.

Twelve hundred fifty dollars.

 

Tammany Creek Road, it winds

Through hills as soft as breasts,

Dotted with cows and calves–

Spring days, you see them born,

Dropped to the ground in glistening sacks,

Mama’s licking too calmly, you think,

As their eyes try to focus on a new world.

 

She pulled a rusty 2-horse straight load

Along the road that winds through hills

As soft as breasts, pulled onto the gravel drive,

As steady, and slow, as resolve.

 

Resolve:

I’ve never seen a woman cry so unashamed,

Over a horse, in front of strangers.

I’ve never seen a horse look so long

Up a road, for a woman to return.

 

Second Wife

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Uncategorized

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Tags

Ancestry Poems, Bisbee AZ, Cochise County, English Brides, Evergreen Cemetery, Poem, Poetry, Second Wife, Women's Issues, Women's Poems

68093883_130308442077

I look for her in the mirror.

How many times have I seen

Alice in black and white:

Spectacles perched above her nose,

Blonde hair pulled back,

Features as tiny as her waist.

The simple lace wedding dress

Gathers tightly there—

Think bound

Think trapped.

When she died, her stepchildren

Wanted to tear it apart for fabric,

But somehow it floated down to us

On wings as fragile as dead butterfly’s,

Or old bones in Cochise sand.

I don’t see Alice Martha Goldie,

His young English bride,

Not in my eyes, my hair,

Nose, cheeks, or chin,

Not even the waist,

In only this:

Second wife,

A woman in an unmarked grave,

Orphans, and a wedding dress

As thin as air.

alice martha goldie wedding dress from 1910

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Death Forgiveness Hope Horses Life Loneliness Loss Love Poem Poems Poetry Soul Souls Spirit Survival Yearning

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