Thursday, September 29, 2011

What Is Love







What Is Love?

What is love but a fervent wish to be
more in the universe than what we see?
More than a solitary organism of life
condensed to mere struggle and strife.

What is love but a breeze of truth
blowing us through the fountain of youth?
It sweeps away the dust and decay
and shines brightly on even the darkest day.

What is love but our cloak of protection
against the deadly pierce of lonely isolation?
A vessel to share without fear of shatter
shielded from all that doesn’t really matter.

What is love but the residue of our dreams?
Stardust to suffocate the screams.
A trunk full of our thinnest skins,
padlocked and hidden from the cold winds.

What is love but to be
truth, protection, and dreams.

Wordles


 Where Art Thou Calm?

Silent clouds drift in seditious march to thunderclaps
and the shutter snaps a rainbow’s sporadic dance
from pot of gold to pot of gold. Neither here nor there,
while leaves tremor in the grumblings of a sacred mist.

Where, oh where art thou, dear calm?
The croak of an aging cicada pledges
the return, the rebirth, the life of earth.
A semblance of chaos masks the grand plan.

Unpredictability stamps a stigma of ignorance,
yet Mother Earth allows for nothing to hinder
her tread of constance and authority that
plasters time with absolute control.

Within the tangled tuft of man’s mind
therein lies, enmeshed in the weeds' garden,
a bit of harmony strangled by uncertainty.
Still,

silent clouds drift in seditious march to thunderclaps.

Granite Wishes

The crackled revolution is upon us,
full of cheap strangers who screw
and spin a cleansed desperation. Wasted
light burns hope to ash that piles,
compacted to granite wishes.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

It's Not Quiet



Oats simmered with raisins and caramelized brown sugar.
A sprinkle of cinnamon freckles a pat of sweet cream butter.
Squirrels chatter at finches stopping by the dogwood.
Air is crisp, too crisp for a September Georgia morning.
Sun rests on fluffy gray clouds.

It’s not quiet.

Rooster’s crow and crows caw, while
Blue jays flutter through autumn tinged limbs.
Beneath the peace, beneath the tranquility,
Sorrowful voices from StoryCorp remember,
Memorialize loved ones of 9-11.

A young boy tells his grandfather that he is
The only grandfather and he is missed. A son
Remembers the sharing of last words: I love you.


Words carried on the hoot of the morning dove,
On the beat of hummingbird wings,
Float tenderly on the golden leaf transported
In the eternal breeze, that caresses a cheek
High in the mountains and mingles with black coffee steam.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Meter and Form Poetry

Working on meter and form poetry over at Writing Our Way Home. This is a struggle for me. I've always been a free verse girl, but wanted deeply to learn forms. My attempts at tercets (without counting the meter):

The Hiding Hermit



Where does one go when one isn’t present

Cramped in a hole twisted, stuck and bent

Worry swirls round with evil intent



The sun may shine or the clouds may roll

Matters not to the sunk and buried mole

Who fears the world beyond his little hole



Wait it out and this too shall pass away

Maybe tomorrow, next week, who can say

When the hiding hermit will come out to play

And then:

Heavens Serenade



The skies split and the water flowed

No birds, no crickets, nothing showed

Up for days ‘cept a tiny thrilled toad



Only the patter and pound on dry earth

The gulps and belches of merry and mirth

For the end of the regions dusty dearth



Flowers bloomed bright and bold

All glittered and gleamed like polished gold

The creatures were content, young and old



Rockers on the front porch creaked and swayed

As life once again flourished and played

In the sweet nectar of heavens serenade