the moon at its birth and the sun at its death create just the suggestion of a road that is why I rise early for the sunrise why I ask you to join me for the sunset to howl howl at the open moon
Lips pressed against a crystal glass,
she gazes at the stars.
A prisoner, she scans the sky
from Jupiter to Mars.
Within this arranged marriage,
her future has been cinched.
Trapped within tradition,
her fire has been quenched.
Blind terror fills her body
as she thinks of what she’ll lose,
for it is another
she’d have if she could choose.
A pity that she has to take
this means of her escape,
as she tucks the lethal bottle
in the pocket of her cape
and drinks the draught in one fast gulp,
then lets out one long sigh
as she enters that dark tunnel
that leads from Earth to sky.
The Sunday Whirl Wordle 628 prompts are: blind lips body escape pressed pitied tunnel lose trapped fire glass stars (Image by Louis Galvez on Unsplash.)
This is actually a true story. When I was at the beach a few years ago, I had a house right on the beach and it got so I never knew who I would find on my porch when I woke up in the morning. I published this poem once before, three years ago, but here it is again:
Found Poem
One and two and three and four. Four little music makers pounding on my door. One beats a rhythm, one toots a horn–– wild and sweet––sort of forlorn. One hums a tune behind his teeth–– a sort of descant underneath the melody on the steel guitar. The gulls reel in from near and far to add their screams to the refrain, then fan their wings, silent again.
Four musicians at my gate. I wait for their music to abate. Then I go and let them in to add my music to the din. I sing my lyrics fast and slow first soft then loud, my lyrics go up and over the drums and horn– out into the sandy morn. Over the rocks and out to sea, setting all our music free.
When the drummer leaves my porch, he leaves just three to loft the torch. Too soon the horn, too, fades away but the hummer’s here to stay, and the steel guitar swells out to fill the morning air until until the morning fades into full sun and our melody comes done.
Soon guitar and singer fade, their morning share of music made, and I fold my songs away. I’ll bring them out some other day. With music left behind I wind only words around my mind. They weave their spell with me along. I lose myself in their noisy throng. Wander aimless, round and round, in getting lost, this poem is found.
The mare lifts her head, Her edges framed by sunlight as, with a wounding grace, her colt strips leaves from branches tender as his own lithe legs tangled in new willow.
Clouds form a new volcano behind the mountains. Beer bottles stick, almost buried, from scabbed truck ruts feet deep. A man with his mewling cow on a rope follows long plaintive cries in the direction of her almost-grown calves.
In the immense spreading Grandmother of trees, the egrets open their back feathers like bottlebrush blooms, and fan after fan, They stroke the air. White against the vivid green leaves.
I’ve been doing a dozen things at once all day long. My Day of the Dead altar is in its seventh incarnation— marigolds and mosaic skulls added, the flowerpots wrapped in silver foil.
In front of most of its honorees is a single offering. Chocolate for my mother, a tiny glass of milk with cornbread crumbled in it for my dad, a joint for Gloria.
I need to decide between a tiny book of poems and a can of Coke for Bob.
Altar rejects litter the table and floor around me and the frames I’ve been painting around the paintings I should already have taken to the gallery still don’t look just right.
But from the iPod, Mary Gauthier is advising me to have a little mercy now. So, although I can’t resist putting away the Scotch tape and three pens and two three pairs of scissors first,
I am committed to writing just one poem before first going in search of the glass of “Oats Overnight” I made and then misplaced and then my phone— lost for the fifth time today.
I thank Telmex for the house phone I keep solely for calling my lost cell phone, which I find two feet away from my left hand, buried under an unruly pile of papers and a paper maché figure of a small skeleton in a sombrero and hoop skirts holding an empty basket.
Joe Purdy bewails Canyon Joe, surrendering the stage to whoever recorded a C&W version of “Let it Be Me.” Someone not the Everly Brothers— perhaps you know who. My ipod just says “Track 09,” which sounds like a Bob Dylan song, doesn’t it?
And this is the best argument I can think of to end this attempt at a poem and surrender to Netflix. Or perhaps a swim in this afternoon’s still-hot pool.
The dogs will come out to commune as well. And perhaps the white owl will fly over as it did that night long ago, swooping low over the pool, then rising to wing over the neighbor’s house.
The Avett Brothers are advising me to “Go to Sleep” but I resist. Too many piles to deal with and perhaps I should venture one more try at getting my new computer to sync with the Cloud. Or watch that last episode of “Sex Education” which I cannot believe I am addicted to.
Griffin House declares they are “Crazy for You,” which seems appropriate to end this poem with. These songs have aged well over the ten years since you sent the mixed tape I’ve been listening to ever since.
You are a crafty sorceress who holds men in your spell. You clutch their hearts within your grasp where you squeeze them well, then drain their living hearts of blood and leave them with a shell with which to fend off, for a lifetime, loves which may be true, but which they do not trust at all simply because you have branded them for life with doubts perpetually new each time they try to ply love’s trade to find something’s amiss as, still again, a rueful fog envelops each new kiss. Thus, with sketchy prospects, loves two, three, four, five, six, are extinguished by that first cursed love that blows out all their wicks!
For theSunday Whirl Wordle 625the prompt words are: sorceress sketchy life , you, brand six, still, fog hold spell fend ply
My hairdo is unraveling in the ocean’s spray,
and the men are talking fishing so I haven’t much to say.
I do not know their language and the sea breeze makes me cough.
My skin’s at risk in sunlight, but a stone-throw’s distance off,
in the shelter of a palm tree, I find shade, at least,
open up my backpack and partake in a small feast.
Then after I have eaten, when the sun has reached the rim
of the far horizon, I finally have a swim.
For once the sun’s not flaming, it creates a lovely glow,
sinking toward the ocean and vanishing below.
The sea has pleased the fishermen all day, cast after cast,
but as the sun sinks into it, it’s pleasing me, at last.
A blade of wheat that my dad found spread out alone upon the ground was no doubt relieved and thrilled that it wound up, instead of milled, stuck between my dad’s front choppers, better there than in the hoppers of the flour mill’s grinding wheels— a sacrifice to future meals. A fate as toothpick far superior to a stomach’s dark interior!!
During wheat harvesting, my dad often had a stem of wheat, head attached, sticking out from between his two front teeth. Caught in the act of picking his teeth, it was a handy storage place. Other times of the year, his front pocket always contained a few toothpicks to first use, then suck on, switching them from side to side between his lips. This prompt was made just for me!!!
Lost my dolly, don’t know where. She’s got no clothes and got no hair. She’s somewhere out there lost and bare, thinking that I do not care. I’d go out looking, but don’t dare.
That babysitter over there (My mother calls her our au pair) came by foot and ship and air from a country named Zaire to sit here on her derriere and watch me with her icy stare.
I open up our Frigidaire. Could my dolly be in there? I climb up on a bedroom chair and go through Mommy’s underwear. I do not think that she would care. I find my brother’s whistle there, hidden in that lacy lair, and think it really isn’t fair. It’s every mother’s cruel nightmare. My dolly isn’t anywhere!
I had to stop the car to take this photo. I wish I knew the true story behind it. I can’t imagine any little girl throwing out her doll, and the lot was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Someone must have tossed it in there. A mean boy? A jealous brother? Was it unwanted loot from a burglary? My mom and I once rode all the way back out to the dump from town to retrieve a doll’s head we’d thrown away. All the way home, we’d both been thinking about it, sitting there amidst coffee grounds and broken light bulbs. We had pulled into the garage when my mom turned to look at me and said, “Do you want to go back out and get that doll’s head?” I nodded. We did, and I have that head to this very day. If my mom had been with me, one or the other of us would have gotten through that barbed wire somehow. As it is, this image is the only part of the doll that I was able to rescue.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 