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.

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.

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