Category Archives: poems about death

September is the Cruelest Month–NaPoWriMo 2016, Day 4

 

 

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Riding in luxury on a sofa in the back of Denis’s pickup, seeing the beautiful Klamath country in style. We were driven directly under a rainbow that day, so it was on either side of us as we passed!      photo by Georgia Moriarty

September is the Cruelest Month

One cruel month is January, murdering December––
failed resolutions of last year we’re now forced to remember.

February rivals it for those with lovers missing––
conjuring up memories of  valentines and kissing.

March may come in cruelly–a lion or a ram,
but it is not the cruelest month. It goes out like a lamb.

April is the the month of rain and flowering and rhyme.
It cannot be the cruelest month. It is the most sublime.

May is not a cruel month, nor June, most surely not.
July and August are most kind––luxurious and hot.

September is the month for me that is the cruelest.
September is the month where I received my biggest test

in learning how to live alone after so many years,
conquering the loss of you. Battling my fears.

September was the month you left because you had to go––
away from planned adventures down a road you didn’t know.

Setting off alone–something you rarely did in life,
where you preferred to travel with a lover or a wife.

October found me no man’s wife, November found me gone
to take the road that we had planned. I would not be death’s pawn.

Then that December–– crueler than any month I’ll own.
That was the month I had the time to finally feel alone.

 

The prompt today was to write about “The cruelest month.”
http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-4/

Three Lunes / Three Loons

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Colored pencil drawing by Betty Petersen, photo by Judy

Yes, it’s April Fool’s Day, but it is also  the first day of NaPoWriMo, where participants are asked to write a poem a day.  This is the fourth year I’ve participated. Today’s prompt is to write a lune, a three-line poem with a 5-3-5 syllable count.  In addition, most days I’ll also be following the WordPress one-word prompt, which today is the word “colorful.”

Three Lunes

I search for yellow,
whereas blue
comes looking for me!

Life paints a black frame
around white
to draw our eyes there.

That fuchsia flower
in the pond
floats on life and death.


Three Loons

The crying of loons
in chill air
turns the water blue.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/colorful/

After Fifteen Years

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(If you are viewing this in the Reader, poem will not be formatted correctly.  Please click on the blog title above the photo to view this post from my blog where it will be in the correct shape.)

After 15 Years

Your memory                                                   cuts so sharply
through my dream’s beginning that I wake,
gasping like a fish on the sand
left by some fisherman
too intent upon his next catch
to end it cleanly.

In its tight skin,
I gasp for air,
rise as it cannot rise
and like you cannot rise
out to that night sea air
which is the only coolness
in a month of burned days.

My memory, curving round,
pulls in the memory of you
like gills seeking to understand
the waterless air.

Landed by some bigger fisherman
whose bait you couldn’t resist,
“Oh,” you said, just “Oh,”
before you took the hook,
slipping from my grasp
as I held on, held on,
let go.

Sweep (On the Death of David Bowie)

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Sweep

(On the Death of David Bowie)

Our world is clearing out around us,
swept by the broom of whatever moves things on.
Like dead leaves curling in their separate corners,
we miss the sweep this time,
but in our mind’s back edge
we imagine our ends—painful or quick,
alone or crowded with the vestiges of our life:
people, things, a cat curled over our feet to warm what can’t be warmed.
That broom leaning there against the corner has plans for us.
There is a world wanting to be filled up again
that needs clearing.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/teen-age-idol/

Airborne

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Airborne

Way back in our salad years,
our endings were all sealed with tears
as each successive love affair
popped like a bubble into air.

Now that we’ve earned our seasoning,
more endings end in reasoning.
We understand that all things end
as lover, father, daughter, friend

begins to go the way of all
who stumble, falter, fade and fall.
It is the fate that’s given us,
with all our stories ending thus.

Accomplishments, possessions, love
are like the fingers of a glove
that, when all our work is done
peel off each finger, one by one.

Empty-handed, we leave this life–––
its pleasures, loving, stress and strife––
to join the welcoming arms of air.
To discover what awaits us there.

This morning, I awoke to the line, “Way back in our salad years,” running through my mind.  The next lines occurred as I let the dogs out and stumbled back to bed. I completed the poem before I looked at the daily prompt, and although it doesn’t meet the exact prompt, it seems to go along with the title of “Builds Character,” so here it is! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/it-builds-character/