Love Prone
His heartfelt joy was palpable. His maelstrom of affection
spread throughout his body—a beneficent infection.
And yet he was resilient when his lover proved untrue.
He simply found another girl and fell in love anew!
Prompt words for today are maelstrom, palpable, heartfelt and resilient.
Verse for a Reclusive One
I refuse to say goodbye. I’d rather say hello
if you should ever come back from where you have to go.
In the interim, I’ll let my memories be my guide.
Sometimes they are the safest places to abide.
You decried my frivolous gestures, yet ate up all the cake
those birthdays when you swore festivities were a mistake.
Oh, my reclusive loved-one, why do you hide away?
You do not have the answer. That’s why you never say.
Prompts for today are goodbye, refuse, guide, frivolous and cake.
Secrets of a Warm Climate
After a hot afternoon,
a sudden rising chill wind
blows his canvas from the wall.
The pool, filled with the blood of the volcano,
is still hot soup warm after twelve hours of cooling. I slide into it,
all others in the house and neighborhood asleep or abed.
Strings of papyrus blown into the water
catch at me like cobwebs as I swim through viscous water.
I comb them from the water with my fingers
and launch them poolside.
Gentle music floats up from the town,
backup to the repetitious trilling of the nightingale
and the far-off Who? Who? Of an owl.
The crack of the house settling into night.
The wind singing in a different voice from every palm tree
under a clear sky filled with stars.
Air cool on my face,
water hot around my body— its currents like silken whips,
I try to remember sensuality with someone else attached to it.
Moving forward and back, then in circles around the kidney-shaped edge,
I am drunk on the night, making my own romance,
knowing that what matters, now that past loves are over,
is not sharp words or all the craziness of love’s endings,
but instead—the first yearning wishes met impossibly
by the answer in another’s eyes and voice, then mouth and hands.
What is important is that sweet pain of wanting—
the answering pain of wanting back.
All the fairytales of new love:
tropical sand or mountain canyons echoing the call
of goats and the answer of goatherds,
a first sight across a smoky room,
hearing a poet’s words about a past love
and, knowing that power could be directed towards me,
dizzy in love before I even met him.
His death or love dying first is not what it is important to remember—
just those days where love was everything that mattered.
And in this life gained after those first vanished loves,
”Send me a sign,” I say, looking to the stars.
And there is a flash, immediate.
Not a falling star,
but one shooting upward in a quick bursting flash of light.
Here is the prompt. And here is what others wrote for the prompt: dVerse Poets: Secret.
Photo by Giovanni Ribeiro on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Words of Wooing
He took her to the movies. He took her to the fair.
He raved about her choice of clothes. He doted on her hair.
He brought his uke and stood for hours strumming at her gate,
riffing on the talents of the lovely Kate.
Was he accurate? Were all his laudatory quips
valid? All those praises of her swan neck and her lips?
Not likely, but it’s lucky that the lady was so vain
that she took verbatim the praises of her swain.
They married in the autumn and by spring the truth was known.
He no longer sang her praises. She had to sing her own!
Prompt words for today are movie, valid, riff, accuracy and gate.
Oxygen
I breathe you out
and breathe you in
as you restore my lack.
With your passing,
fine hairs on my arms
stand at attention,
as though reaching out
for the mere touch
of you.
You surround and enter me,
then beat a hasty retreat,
in and out like children
passing through
a kitchen door.
Needing something,
then needing to be gone,
called in again
by request or need.
You fill and nourish me.
You lift my tresses
from my shoulders,
tangle my fringe,
blow the insignificant
from my life.
Deposit autumn leaves,
like sad reminders
of your passing.
Photos will enlarge if you click on them.
Wooden Heart
We often wash our minds clean here on memory lane,
so what was a dark portrait is illumined once again.
Daily random memories wash up on the shore
while sadder associations stand waiting by the door.
I do not choose remembering the dark spots in our past.
It is the brighter moments that I prefer to last.
The heart I formed from copper, the heart you carved of wood.
All the broken contracts healed by all the good.
Love stories come in fits and starts and so it was with ours—
we must choose our final endings by our selective powers
to decide what we will sift from memory’s fine sand,
and though the bitter moments haven’t been fully banned,
I daily choose the moments that I will remember—
that March day when our love was young, not your final September.
When I met Bob, he was teaching art in Canyon Country, California. One day he brought me this pouch necklace he had made of leather in class. Inside was a wooden heart with his initial on one side and my initial on the other. Yes. I had to marry the man. Later, with his encouragement, I became a metalsmith and formed this heart out of copper for him. The pouch now also contains a lock of his hair, a lock of mine, a miniature bar of chocolate–his favorite food on earth–and a tiny dinosaur carved by one of his small sons in the studio where he worked with his dad. When I admired it, he gave it to me, just as Bob gave to me the family he brought with him when we married.
Prompts today are memory lane, daily, dark, portrait and wash.
Respite
Although it is the day lit world that shouts at me, it seems
that when darkness closes, you echo in my dreams.
