Category Archives: Love poem

This Dress: The Sunday Whirl, Wordle #511

4 Replies

This Dress

This dress, stuffed in a corner of an old trunk,
sparks memories, rekindling magic.
From far in the future, I feel the past
rising to join me. It heats the cold air of the attic
and the skies outside the window clear of clouds.

A warm spring afternoon on a blanket in the park,
the outing I thought spontaneous
crowned with the offer of a ring.
Spilling the wine, falling sideways into the three-tiered coconut cake,
rising as one, laughing—a freshly engaged couple.

Licking the frosting off your arm. Your licking the frosting off my neck.
Symbiotic in new plans for our continuance into the future—
into the length of our lives.
That dress. A bit of frosting still on the collar.
You, so many years after, still blooming in my memory.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle # 511 the prompt words are rekindle, dress, far, future, magic, ring, rising, sky, heats, spontaneous legendary sparks. Image by Kate Hizlitznova on Unsplash.

Act Three

22 Replies

Act Three

The echo of your footsteps as you trod across my mind
creates anticipation of a nostalgic kind.

You elevate my consciousness as you were wont to do
and so in time I manifest the whole grand rest of you.

You’ve been a silent tenant for so many years
that this surprise appearance prompts again those  tears

I thought had been dried up in me when you had to go
to that place where you were drawn by the undertow.

For only a brief moment, we are as we have been, 
’til with a click of memory, I banish you again.

You slip back into shadow in the attic of my mind,
where both of us lie tangled, hopelessly entwined.

I come back to the present while you’re banished to the past,
once again resuming the roles in which we’re cast.

You imprisoned in act two, caught eternally
while I assume a solo role, living out act three.

Prompt words today are elevate, echo, click, tenant and cross.

Fresh Prizes: For Marilyn and Garry

19 Replies

Fresh Prizes

Even though she thinks she knows him to the bone,
another little detail comes forward to be shown.
Like a little prize, presented for her viewing,
after all thee years, he’s not finished with his wooing.

No fact  inconsequential as he unveils his life,
so even after decades as a man and wife,
new mysteries are still revealed in words coined charismatically.
Each new revelation, an avowal made emphatically.

 

This poem is in answer to Marilyn Armstrong’s comment about her husband, Garry:

Marilyn Armstrong

We still are discovering things we didn’t know about each other. You’d think we’d know it all by now, but we keep surprising each other. It’s kind of cool.

Prompt words today are prize, drain, emphatic, inconsequential and bone.

Divergence

2 Replies

Screen Shot 2020-06-06 at 10.23.16 AM

Divergence

It’s the untold exposition 
of most love stories–
that split in the path ahead
that was hinted at, perhaps,
from the beginning.

Overlooked but inevitable,
it makes this story
as regular as most of the others.
It is the flourishes
that make the romance
that nudges us
to try again.

 

Today’s word prompts are: the path ahead, split, (starting to sound like a Robert Frost poem in the making, here,) untold, exposition and regular.

Holding Back the Moon

2 Replies

DSC09339

Holding Back the Moon

Standby. I think I love you, though I’m not completely certain.
But when I see the ship of moon  through my bedroom curtain,
then watch it disappear as the sky takes up its space,
as though its crew has moved it to another time and place,
I hope that you can moor yourself and stay your bullish pride
while you wait for my decision. Please stem restlessness. Abide.

IMG_0643

Prompt words today are standby, moon, disappear, crew and pride.

Couple-ets: April 1, 2020

7 Replies

“Couple-ets”

The path I thought was straight and easy has developed swerves.
This trick-or-treat relationship is getting on my nerves.

One day you bring me sweets and roses—all my fond heart seeks.
The next you end up ghosting me and disappear for weeks.

Our bond I once thought perfect is showing signs of wear.
Too often I’m a single whereas once we were a pair.

That love once thought infrangible now sports a widening crack.
Don’t show up as who you’ve become. I want the old you back!

Where once I published love poems, now I tell how my heart aches.
Where once I wrote of how love grows, now I tell how it breaks.

 

Prompt words today are infrangible, publish, ghosting, trick and sweet. The jar pictured is a wedding jar I purchased in Chiapas. The idea is for the bride and groom to each drink out of their own spout of the communal cup. Lovely imagery. I put black beans in it to hold the plants upright as they developed roots and filled it full of water. A few weeks later I came out to find that the beans had soaked up the water, expanded, and burst the cup. What a metaphor!!! Perfect for this poem…

 

Words of Wooing

8 Replies

Screen Shot 2020-01-21 at 8.49.45 AMPhoto by Giovanni Ribeiro on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Words of Wooing

He took her to the movies. He took her to the fair.
He raved about her choice of clothes. He doted on her hair.
He brought his uke and stood for hours strumming at her gate,
riffing on the talents of the lovely Kate.
Was he accurate? Were all his laudatory quips
valid? All those praises of her swan neck and her lips?
Not likely, but it’s lucky that the lady was so vain
that she took verbatim the praises of her swain.
They married in the autumn and by spring the truth was known.
He no longer sang her praises. She had to sing her own!
 

Prompt words for today are movie, valid, riff, accuracy and gate.

Suspicion

7 Replies

IMG_1309Suspicion

It’s daybreak when the rude alarm
is shut off by your questing arm.
As you roll over, the blanket’s pull
is your daily ritual.

As you leave the room, I do not stir.
I hear the blender’s angry whirr.
I hear you shower, brush and groom,
but stay wrapped in our bed’s warm womb.

I feel your presence. I hear you cough.
A rapid hug and you are off.
And in these hours away from me,
I suspect infidelity.

All day long I wait and wait
in an agitated state
for the creaking of the gate
that says you’ll soon alleviate

my loneliness this whole day through
that I’ve spent pining over you.
I leave the house, then come inside
to find the presents that you hide

to keep me entertained while you
do whatever you must do
to keep a roof over our head—
to provide shelter, food and bed.

Finally, a slamming door,
your footsteps on the hallway floor.
You bend down for our first caress.
and I’m suspicious, I confess.

I smell your collar, arms and cuff
until I’ve gathered facts enough.
I find no odor, no stray hair.
No other dog has tarried there!

The prompt words today are hug, rapid, suspect, alleviate and daybreak.

Ashes

3 Replies

Ashes

A handful of memories, discounted by time.
Five for a nickel and ten for a dime.
Burned down to ashes, their bodies erased
along with the dreams they achieved or they chased.

How we incorporate thoughts of the past
into our lives may alter and cast
the present in molds that are better off shattered.
Better new memories than those aged and tattered.

Life is for living, so best throw away
corpses of the past that get in the way.
Living is glorious, but it’s not portable.
By merely living, we become deportable.

Thoughts hoarded in dreams should dissolve in the day.
Think too much of the past and it gets in the way.
As hard as it is, it seems that we must
render ashes to ashes, return dust to dust.

 

Prompt words for today are ash, portable, glorious, incorporate and erase.