Tag Archives: dVerse Poets Open Link Night

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

Books, for dVerse Poets Open Link Night

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Books

The fresh bookstore smell of them,
bending the pages to crack the spine,
notes scribbled in the margins,
underlines,
hearts with initials on the flyleaf,
something to loan or to wrap for a gift,
something propped up on the bathtub edge,
it’s paper sprinkled with drops–
pages wrinkled into a Braille memory–
that rainstorm run through.
How he put it in his back pocket.

Poetry touched by fingers.
Single words met by lips.
Words pored over by candlelight or flashlight
in a sleeping bag or in a hut with no electricity.
Books pushed into backpacks
and under table legs for leveling.

Paper that soaked up
the oil from fingers
of the reader
consuming popcorn
or chocolate chip cookies
in lieu of the romance on the pages–
finger food served with brain food.

Passions wrapped in paper and ink–
the allure of a book and its tactile comfort.
The soul of a book you could touch, fold, bend.

Books are the gravestones of trees
but also the journals of our hearts.
Cities of words,
boards and bricks of letters,
insulated by hard covers or the curling skins
of paperbacks.
Something solid to transfer the dreams
of one person to another in a concrete telepathy
of fingers and eyes.
Books are the roads we build between us,
solid and substantial–
their paper the roadbed,
the words the center lines directing us

What will fill the bookcases of a modern world?
Google replacing dictionaries,
Wikipedia already an invisible bank of Encyclopaedia Britannicas.
What will we use our boards and bricks for,
if not to hold up whole tenements of books?
How will we furnish our walls?
What will boys carry to school for girls?
What will we balance on heads
to practice walking with perfect posture?
What will we throw in the direction of the horrible pun?

Will there be graveyards for books, or cities built of them?
Quaint materials for easy chairs or headboards for beds?
Will we hollow them out for cigar boxes
or grind them up for packing material?
Where do books belong in the era of Kindle and Audible?
These dinosaurs that soon will not produce more eggs––
 perhaps they’ll grow as precious as antiques.
The grandchildren of our grandchildren
will ponder how to open them. Will wonder at their quaintness,
collecting them like mustache cups or carnival glass,
wondering about the use of them–as unfathomable as hieroglyphics.
That last book closing its pages––one more obsolete mystery
fueling the curiosity of a bygone era that has vanished
into a wireless universe.

For the dVerse Poets Open Link Night

And….Here is a link to another poem published today: “BEGINNING”

To see how others responded to the prompt go HERE.

Short Adventure for dVerse Poets, Aug 14, 2025

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Short Adventure

dog
woman
all
alone
computer
window
rubber
bone
eye-lock
pleading
invitation
one
thrown
bone
brings
jubilation
further
begging
is
for
naught
a
second
later
fun
forgot

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night

The Brick Throwers, for dVerse Poets, July 19, 2025

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for dVerse Poets Open link Night, the image of rooftops reminded me of this poem written long ago:

The Brick Throwers

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The Prompt: Reviving Bricks—You just inherited a dilapidated, crumbling-down grand mansion in the countryside. Assuming money is no issue, what do you do with it?

The Brick Throwers

They were five in a chain from truck to rooftop,
each throwing the piles of adobe bricks
in stacks of four, from hand to hand
up from the bottom of the truckload
now nearly emptied.
Two of them waved me on
when I tried to park near,
my trunk full of heavy wall sculptures
to deliver to a gallery just half a block away.

And when I tried to park farther along the block,
again and again, they waved me away
until I was a block away and safe, I guess,
from straying bricks or errant cars that swerved
too far to the right to avoid the bricks or truck that held them.
They were a cheerful lot, and when I passed,
walking towards the gallery
carrying one sculpture after another,
they waved, and on my final trip back to the car,
again, the man second in the chain
who stood balanced on the highest level of the brick pyramid
that remained within the truckbed,
seemed to intuit my purpose, waving from me to them
as I drew my camera from my purse.
They all posed for minutes, miming their labor
as I tried to get them to actually throw, as before,
those piles of bricks, hoping to catch them
flying through the air between two pairs of hands.

Finally understanding, they threw and threw,
asking me for a prompt to help me catch that flight
I feared I’d never catch.

(more)

DSC07054

Minutes later, I turned to leave
and they, cheering and smiling in their fame,
turned back to that labor which is an art in Mexico:
giving bricks wings before mortaring them
into a permanency that holds them rigid for lifetimes
until they crumble back into that soil that was their nativity.

This poem should be a metaphor for something
and probably is.
Some future day, when I am moldering in my grave
like some lesser Ozymandius,
some graduate student or scholar of mediocre
Twenty-First-Century poetry might publish a treatise
revealing it.
And they will dig this website from the rubble
of the Internet and find
I wrote it as a daily prompt
and if such records still exist,
find how I hired those men to build a monument
from that crumbling manse of brick
that was my prompt on the Daily Post
and tell how they spent their lifetimes restoring it
and how their children and their children’s children
have benefited from catcalls
and instructions to move on down the line
and the clicking of a camera lens
and from one who follows blindly
where each prompt leads her.

DSC07049

To read other dVerse Poets poems, go HERE.

Crossroads, for dVerse Poets, June 6, 2025

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Crossroads

You and I are at that place where roads cross—
a new place made by the need for things
going in different directions to meet.

How lonely if all roads
veered off on their own, solitary,
never coming to a junction.

It might have been thus, but for
a thousand small decisions that led to this meeting,
here on this corner of your road and my road.

We meet here and become one for as long
as we both decide to stand talking like neighbors,
each of us having veered
halfway away from private territory
to come to the spot here in the middle
where we become two parts of a center.

Neighbor, lover,
friend, acquaintance,
interloper, by-passer
or strangers when we meet,
so many possibilities
in the crossed roads
of our lives.

for dVerse Poets

That Point for dVerse Poets Open Link, Apr 10, 2025

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IMG_0895
That Point

It was at that age
of worrying about others,
of feeling not enough,
of looking for a pattern that was myself
that I put words down,
fearing them
or if not them, fearing those who read them.

At that age when I didn’t know what I thought,
I was astonished that the hand that wrote
knew more than I did
and taught that I must be brave,
fearless on the page in a way I had not yet learned to be in life
so that I became a writer to teach myself.
To have someone I trusted as a guide.

It was at that age when I wanted to be admired––
that age when I sought to be loved––
that age when I yearned to be thought a thinker,
important, listened to––
that I was somehow encouraged to listen to myself.

There are these times we are led to by life
that become turning points
so long as we continue.
That sentence. That first sentence stretching
into the future, into now.

I’m republishing this poem from 2016 for the dVerse Poets Krisis (Turning Point) theme. April 12, 2025 on Open Link Night, Apr 10, 2025

 

The Wall for dVerse Poets, Oct 13, 2024

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The Wall

Somewhere the sun is shining––
somewhere behind me, no doubt.
But I am facing a wall
that is gray and cracked
and reflects no sunlight.

It seems, rather, to soak up everything
that bumps against it,
thinks its thoughts around it,
sits in front of it.

It is a wall sponge.
Right now it has soaked up
every memory
I have of sun.I try to follow
that memory
into it,
but it rejects only me.

I cannot follow
anything
I have put into it––
any thought,
wish,
dream,
memory,
aspiration.

I put my hand against it
and I can feel it draining molecules.
There is a tingling sensation
as they flow out horizontally.
I try to send some bit of sensibility
along with them,
to give me a clue
as to where they go
and what they encounter
there,
but I know that it is futile.

Where every lost part of me goes,
I cannot follow.
I wonder if at death
all of me will finally
flow into the wall,

No way to know
without the ultimate sacrifice.
I have tried, out of curiosity,
to hold my breath;
but I always take that first wide gasp of air
long before unconsciousness.

I have thought of
slashing wrists,
but fail just short
of any scratchings that bring blood.

I do not know if it is fear of dying
or that I value life more than I think I do,
but I have failed that final test a time or two.
I go on living what life
I can experience,
now that I have faced the wall.

It is by choice, you know, that I sit here.
I could walk to the window
and even out the door.
I could take that long walk to the sea wall
that I used to take each morning.

I could go for coffee in the palapa beach restaurant
where I have never failed to meet
someone of my acquaintance,
or shop in the mercado
or go for a swim in the sea.

I once loved all these things.
But since the wall,
everything not the wall
has leached out of my life.
I have not chosen for this to happen,
but nonetheless it has.

Perhaps it is ambition I’ve lost to the wall—
or hope or curiosity.
Perhaps everything that kept me engaged in life
has already left me and gone into that gray world
where I cannot follow.

Now I sit here,
facing it,
acknowledging my failure
as well as its exclusivity.
Somewhere the sun is shining––
somewhere behind me, no doubt.

But I am facing a wall.

 

For dVerse Poets

For dVerse Poets

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Off the Path

I’ve always been a wanderer with no course firmly set.
The purpose of my journey is not established yet.
When my meandering’s over, perhaps it will be clear.
I cannot tell where I’ll be then. For now I’m merely here.

For dVerse Poets

See other poems for this prompt HERE. Image from dVerse Poets

Old Feelings

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Old Feelings

Our prairie  town  stood
in an unending stretch of South Dakota plain
that rolled on for as far
as any eye could see
with not one tree.

Here I dreamed
in the crouched shade of rabbit nests
and killdeer flight,
in the shade of the feigned broken wings of mother birds,
in the shade of tractor blades and haystacks.

This was where  I  would sunburn  and sand stick and deer fly scratch.
Where the ticks waited for me on the wood of the thickets.
Where no dangerous animals lurked
since the gray wolves were ghosts
and the brown bears memories.

Here the Sioux were sequestered in the bars and the reservations.
The horses were safe behind fences,
the cattle wore the tattoos of their owners,
and  feral  cats  were the only descendants left
in the decaying houses  of the homesteaders
of half a century before.

The  floorboards of my Grandmother’s  homestead
sagged  to the dry dirt,
and the roof and timbers
fell  to blanket them.

The ribs of  plows  rusted
in the spring  rainstorms.
Prairie fires burned away  rust
and  snow peeled away ashes
to the muscle of iron
which it picked at like scabs—
iron to rust to ashes to iron to rust.

Kicking the hard clods with my feet,
I knew that under me were arrowheads
and flint strikers
and white stone buttons
in the shape of thunderbirds—
All the rich Indian treasures
buried under the soil
to be turned up some day  by the plow of my dad .

Curled up into the furthest corner of the couch,
I listened to the stories traded between my dad and his friends.
Tales of gray wolves
and children lost in snowstorms,
Indian wanderers and recluse homesteaders
to be lifted out of my dad
like he lifted the Indian relics from the soft soil.

And I feel a part of the prairie dogs and the wild kittens,
the rabbits and the killdeer in their nests.
I feel both threatened and protected by the land––
like a child given asylum under the shadow of trees.
Like myself sheltered in the arms of  the child  I’ve grown from.
That child who, wanting to grow up and feel  less,
Comforts its  grownup self,  who wants the feeling back.

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night.

Moving the Divan

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Moving the Divan

I don’t want to write a poem
using three of my five senses.
I want to move the large divan to a 45-degree angle
and throw away the love seat
to make room for another file cabinet
for my poetry.

It’s stacked all over,
stowed at least two times alphabetically
in boxes beneath my desk,
hidden in the custom headboard of my bed.
File cabinets fill the bottom of every closet.
I’ve come to cutting up poems to make collages
and selling them.
That’s how much I need another file cabinet.
So it’s either more poems in the future
or the love seat.

I don’t want to talk about
how the love seat smells.
It’s Jacaranda blooming time
and with my allergies,
nothing smells like anything.

I will concede, however, that it is grained
like the crepe of my father’s neck––
like cowhide or whatever that leather is
that has impressions
like thousands of small rivers forming a network.
I don’t want to look up
exactly which leather it is on Google.
That one action
could divert me for at least an hour.

And I don‘t want to tell you any more about
what the loveseat is “like.”
I want to tell you that I bought it
when I found a pee stain
on the fabric of my old couch
after the last party a friend attended
before he died.
I cleaned it, then sold it along with its larger brother
and bought a stain-proof leather sofa with matching loveseat.
I don’t want to worry about what friend sits where
or exclude anyone from my guest list on account of my divan.

This leather feels like hanging on to old friends for as long as I can.
This loveseat feels willing to be given up for poetry,
and I know exactly where it should go.
I want it to have a good life
in a coffee bar,
in the library section.

My loveseat will smell like espresso
and bear the crayon marks of children
who come to play there.
It will be made love on
by the young couple that
lives upstairs.
It will have her homemade cheesecake crumbs
fall into its crevasses.
Its very fibers will soak up the music
that is played there
and the poetry that’s read there.

It will be worn out by life
instead of time.
It will predecease its matching full-sized sofa,
but it will be full of smells, textures, tastes and
when people sink into it, you will hear its sound––
that sigh of comfort or grunt of momentary
discomfort as knees bend in penance
for the comfort that is to come.

The rivers in the leather
will be smoothed out
by the bottoms of those
drinking espresso
and frappuccinos
and red wine and cerveza,
growing wider with the cheesecake,
settling in comfortably for conversation
and music and refreshment. Oh, and poetry.

And that, my friend, is how thinking about
rearranging furniture became poetry,
and how that very poem
may find a home.

For SOCS: Move