Category Archives: Poem

“Abundance” for dVerse Poets

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Abundance

How can we approach “abundant”
without resorting to “redundant?”
We must simply have the gall
to search for the original
instead of coming in the door
with something we have bought before––
like “Beanie Babies” by the score.

What if, everywhere we went,
we looked for something different?
So when we chose a friend anew,
they had a different point of view?
From countryside or town or city,
be it huge or itty-bity––
just choose someone you find witty

and mine their mind for something new
that can grow a part of you
that’s different from what came before––
that can open up a door
within your heart, within your mind
of that place where you can find
beliefs of a matching kind.

For dVerse Poets prompt: Abundant

( I know I’m not supposed to be blogging. The dVerse Devil made me do it…_

Thanksgiving, for dVerse Poets

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Thanksgiving

Speeding toward the old year’s end,
we express our thanks for the past year’s treasures––
pathways that we chose to wend.
And each friend whose love endures,
we invite to share in our table’s pleasures.

 

The dVerse Poets prompt is to write a Lire poem: 7, 11, 7, 7, and 11  syllables.
Rhyme Scemer: aBabB. Suggested topic is November or Thanksgiving.

Two Will Do

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Two Will Do

I used to like friends by the score
squeezed wall-to-wall and door-to-door.
A party didn’t even count
until the guests began to mount
up to sixty, seventy, more.
But now, I’m finding crowds a bore.

Now I find that two-by-two
is something I prefer to do.
Conversations more intimate
make it simpler to relate.
So though I used to be a grouper,
now I’m just a party-pooper.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is Number.

“Cruel Nature” for The Sunday Whirl

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Cruel Nature

Wee chirping birdies trill their whistles
while down in the cruel thistles
a baby bunny in the thicket
explores a wound and starts to lick it.
Stiff sticks as sharp as horns of deer 
are what these little creatures fear.


What a great treat it would be
to be those birds up in the tree
looking out from far above––
their feathered nest a cosy glove
that fits them well, all snug and warm
up there far from pain and harm.

This sunset must be nature blushing,
and this momentary hushing
at the end of day a type of prayer
for quaking creatures hidden where
unprotected, they await 
their potential sadder fate.

 

The Sunday Whirl Wordle #733 prompt words are: thistles horns stiff treat wee chirping fit down stick blushing out moment   I made use of AI to create the images.

“Quit Before It’s Too Late” for RDP Sunday

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Quit Before It’s Too Late

Why oh why did I not quit
before the very end of it?
Douse live coals in the fire pit
or leave that fatal fire unlit?
Withhold that kick, suppress that hit?
Hold back the urge to squeeze that zit?
Leave that final plot unknit?
Alas, this is the truth of it:
one chance is all we mortals get.

For RDP Sunday  the prompt word is; Quit

If I Were Water and You Were Air for dVerse Poets

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If I Were Water & You Were Air

I used to be restless water―
only the froth and currents
of a moving life.

Now I am still water,
sinking down to where
I can be found
by anyone willing to stand quietly
and look.

Is it true that moving water never freezes?
Is it true that still waters run deep?
Is it true that we are wed in steam?

“What if, caught by air,
it never lets me go?” I ask.
“But even water
turned to air
must fall at last,” you say.

“And what if I fall farther from you?” I say.
“Or what if I never again find banks
that open to contain me?”

I used to be swift flowing water.
Now I am a pool that sinks me deeper every year.
So deep, so deep I sink
that on its way to find me,
even air may lose its way.

Our dVerse Poets prompt today is to consider the opening line from a poem from one of my favorite poets, Edna St Vincent Millay. The Poem is “Love Is Not All,” and the line is:
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.” As a response, I’m sharing the title poem from my newly published book of poems.

 

The Blade of Grief for dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

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 The Blade of Grief

The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too,
We view the rest of life without a clue.

The blade of grief thus buried to its hilt,
we hope that it will do what such blades do,
The loss of one with whom our life was built,
will come to be the loss of our life, too.

We view our hopes for death with little guilt,
for death is that new love we hope to woo.
We seek no other lover that is new.
The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too.
We view the rest of life without a clue.

For dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

To read other roundels created for this prompt, go HERE.

I Imagine, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

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I Imagine

I imagine one more holiday.
My mother sits at a large picture window
looking out over a broad beach,
watching dogs fetching sticks.
Then, because she cannot help it,
she takes her shoes off and walks out the door.

I imagine her  sighting the offshore rock
where puffins nest.
I imagine footprints–hers and mine
and the paw prints of the dog–
someone else’s–
who joins us for the price of a stick thrown
over and over into the waves.

My mother could count her trips to the beach
on one hand,
and most of those times have been with me.
Once, in Wales, we sat on the long sea wall
under Dylan Thomas’s boathouse.
A cat walked the wall out to us,
precise and careful
to get as few grains of sand as possible
between its paw pads.
Preening and arching under my mother’s smooth hand,
it’s black hairs caught in her diamond rings.

The other time we went to the beach
was in Australia.
We stayed out all afternoon,
throwing and throwing a stick.
A big black dog running  first after,
then in front of it,
My dad sleeping in the car parked at the roadside,
my mother and I playing together
as we  had never played before.

My mother and the ocean
have always been so far divided
with me as  the guide rope in between.
I imagine reeling them both in toward each other
and one more trip.
My mother, me, a dog or cat.
Wind to bundle up for and to walk against.
Wind to turn our ears away from.
Sand to pour out of our pockets
to form a small a volcano
with a crab’s claw at the top.

So that years from now,
when I empty one pocket, I  will find sails
from by-the-wind-sailors
and shark egg casings,
fragile black kelp berries
and polished stones.
The dreams of my mother.  The bones of me.

From the other pocket, empty,
I will pull all the reunions I never fought hard enough for–
regrets over trips to the sea we never made.
And I’ll imagine taking me to oceans.
Walks.  Treasures hidden in and hiding sand.
Someone walking with me–
someone else’s child, perhaps,
and a dog chasing sticks.

I have a wonderful photo of my mother with a cat on Dylan Thomas’s Sea Wall,
taken during our trip around Great Britain in 1985, but I cannot find it, so here
is the only one I have of her and me alone together ,taken
by my sister Betty Jo, thirty-some years before .

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night

A Regal Final Breath, for RDP Wednesday

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greg-daines-1376875-unsplash
Her Highness Contemplates A Seemly End

Nobility in dying is something I shan’t botch,
for I know it shall be one that the whole wide world will watch.
I cannot go by fire, for I’m sure I would be screaming
as the water quenched the fire and set my flesh to steaming.

So unseemly and so crass. I’d find it unappealing.
So, too, a rope around my neck, hanging from the ceiling.
Jumping from a roof won’t do. Nor will a gun nor pills.
Every sort of suicide just sports too many ills.

It’s clear that death by avalanche is the only one
that will really suit me when the day is done.
A certain swift clean fall of snow seems such a pristine death.
A queenly mode of dying. Such a regal final breath!

For RDP Wednesday the prompt is REGAL

Must admit that I am rerunning a poem I wrote for RDP six years ago. At that time the prompt was was “avalanche”, but as you can see, the poem works for “regal” as well!

Sunset of Memory for The Sunday Whirl Wordle

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Sunset of Memory

This lack  of memory plagues my world:
words I can’t remember,
Ideas that once fired my life
have faded down to ember.

It is a cruel injustice
that my thoughts have been arrested.
They escape me daily
as my memory is bested.

So, although throughout my life,
my strength has been the word,
suddenly they desert me
and my life’s become absurd.

My faith in unity of words
and mind has come undone,
and, I fear, is fading
with the setting of the sun.

 

For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 730 the prompt words are: ideas remember words plague escape faith strength unity through arrest cruelty injustice

And, for Times Change prompt, as well.