The Persistent Suitor
He has no right to loiter here, has no permit to tarry.
He looks no more familiar than Tom or Dick or Harry.
And yet he is persistent, as though it’s his profession.
He gives no apology and renders no confession.
One day he carries chocolates, another a bouquet,
yet they do not grant him access. They do not pave the way.
Then one day he’s missing. He doesn’t grace her door.
She hears no insistent knocking. There are no offerings more.
All day, she thinks of him and where he might have chosen to wander.
It seems perhaps that once again, absence has led to fonder
reflections on the part of one who’s playing hard-to-get.
(She is noted for her skill at it among the party set.)
One more day he’s absent. She claims she doesn’t care.
It’s easier to leave her house without a suitor there.
Yet when he finally comes again, she opens up her door
flushed with her power to attract. Victorious to the core!
“Yes?” she says, one eyebrow lifted in disdain,
as though another suitor is an aggravating pain.
And the confidence of her suitor seems never to have swerved.
As he handed her an envelope and said, “Ma’am, you’ve been served!”
The prompt today was permit.
Morning Ritual
One pill, two pills, three pills four.
Five and six complete the score.
Then one rolls off onto the floor,
but knees are stiff and back is sore,
reclaiming it a painful chore,
so you just open up the drawer
and select one capsule more.
Swallowing pills is such a bore.
Can you remember what each is for?
So many streets and pathways— so many different directions to go.
All photos may be enlarged by clicking on them.
For: https://ceenphotography.com/2018/02/02/cees-which-way-photo-challenge-february-2-2018/
Creatures under Rain
All day long, the rain came down
to soak the mountain, drench the town.
Each dog stayed in to curl into
his protective curlicue.
I took their lead and kept inside
as the world around me cried and cried.
Though I won’t say that I’m feeling down,
I do not choose to paint the town
and marks on paper have turned into
other than a curlicue.
I painted what I felt inside
with words that folded in and cried.
Their pigments bled and rivered down
joining currents from the town,
and tears from other creatures, too,
joined this watery curlicue.
This whirlpool that we’d kept inside
joined us together as we cried.
The sun comes up and moon goes down
over country, lake and town.
Illumination cycles, too,
through nature’s dizzying curlicue.
When we share these truths we’ve found inside,
others hear what we’ve decried.
The whole world may be feeling down
dreading contact with the town.
The words we free may catch them, too,
in their discursive curlicue,
loosening pain they’ve kept inside—
dispelling tears they might have cried.
I was intrigued by the self-set challenge of composing a five stanza poem where each stanza made use of the same six rhyming words in the same order. I think it isn’t terribly noticeable except for the unusual world “curlicue” that eventually tips the reader off as to what is happening. Still, it was an engaging challenge to make it work six times.What should I name this form? Six-Step? Any other ideas? The prompt today is creature.
Hard Transit
My grandfather and his two teenaged daughters
drove a wagon to Dakota to claim a homestead.
I never asked how many weeks they traveled, or the hardships that they faced.
The young don’t know what answers they will wish for until it’s too late;
so only imagination serves to describe the heat,
day after day with no water except for what they carried,
coyotes, gray wolves and the glaring sun of the treeless prairie.
My aunts were just young girls dealing with the difficulties young girls face
in the sparsest of conditions. No mother. No outhouses.
The jarring ride—grasshoppers so thick the wagons skidded off the tracks,
and that loneliness of riding into
the emptiness of a strange world.
Now, I stand impatiently at the immigration window,
then the ticket line and the security line.
I empty pockets, discard water bottle,
remove computers from their cases, take off shoes,
raise my arms for the check,
struggle up the escalator with bag and purse,
find the right gate,
negotiate the walkway to the plane,
lift the heavy carry-on and lower myself into the too-small seat.
“Plane travel isn’t what it used to be,” my neighbor says,
and we console each other about how hard it is.
“Nine hours from Guadalajara to St. Louis—
a plane change and a three-hour layover in Atlanta,”
I grumble, and he sympathizes.
This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote so long ago that even I don’t remember it! The prompt today is sympathize.
On Facebook, click on the URL to see all 35 photos. When you get to my blog, then click the first photo and arrows to enlarge all photos.
The WP Weekly photo prompt is beloved.
To Get a Poem
(5 Quadrilles)
Leave the dirty dishes in the sink.
A dishwasher washes the poems away.
Allow cat hair to accumulate on the footstool.
Cat hair is a city for poems.
Let plants go another day before watering,
lest poems in the soil should be flushed away.
Let lie the crumpled sock a friend’s child
left in the sleeping loft.
Don’t destroy the poem of it.
Don’t bother to rake leaves.
Poems cannot live in neat piles.
Leave the soupstain on your shirt .
Tomato and basil are ingredients of poetry.
There is a poem in the confetti of paper on the bedroom carpet
and in the bread crumbs and the orphaned straight pins.
Bills in the “TO BE PAID” folder?
Each is the embryo of a poem.
Paying them now would be poetry murder.
In my living room, there is more poetry
in the blankets of dust on glass tables
than the burnished surface of the clay vase.
There is more poetry, more poetry, more poetry
than can ever be tidied up in this world or the next.
Falling poetry snarls in the weave of the hammock.
All of this raw poetry lies around us, primed for the collecting.
Messy poetry and dusty.
You won’t die from, but you could live on
poetry that’s hidden in the messy corners of your world.
For dVerse Poets. The prompt was to write a quadrille on the subject of poetry.
