Holding Back the Moon
Standby. I think I love you, though I’m not completely certain.
But when I see the ship of moon through my bedroom curtain,
then watch it disappear as the sky takes up its space,
as though its crew has moved it to another time and place,
I hope that you can moor yourself and stay your bullish pride
while you wait for my decision. Please stem restlessness. Abide.
Prompt words today are standby, moon, disappear, crew and pride.
Enamoured
Mere man, mere dame,
a mean red moon.
A dream remade,
a mar, a dune.
Marooned and moored
and no end near.
Me enamoré.
Me arrear.
This poem was written making use of only the letters in the word enamoured. To do so, I had to make use of two languages. In Spanish, a ”mar” is a sea or ocean, but “amar” can also mean to love. “Me enamoreé“ means “I fell in love.” “Me Arrear” can mean either “I got caught,” “Drive me” or “Grab me.” It also carries the connotation for me that the object of her affection’s love might be in arrears. “En arrear” can have that meaning in Spanish as well. Since I used the British spelling of the title word to increase my choices, I guess you could say this poem is trilingual. Comes in handy when limited in the consonants and vowels one can use.
Ocean Airs
The surf and sand we fell down on—
a bed provided by the sea
that smoothed the sheets we lay upon.
Those stories spun out by your tongue
slipped out of you through parted lips—
portals through which your life was sung.
Letter, syllable and word
was carried by the power of breath—
each a lovely soaring bird.
How did they know to find their way
to one who coveted their sound—
their whisper and their plaintive bay?
That night stretched out upon the beach,
finally, we fell to rest
and tell our stories without speech.
For the dVersePoets Pub, we were to write a poem of tercets, using three of these sets of words as ends to lines. I broke the rules and used all five.
SPEECH REST BEACH
ON SEA UPON
WORD BREATH BIRD
WAY SOUND BAY
SUNG LIPS TONGUE
Please click on the title above so WP will reformat the poem into its intended shape. For some reason The Reader always left margin justifies and this poem needs to be centered.
Camouflage
A man is bending his wife—
melding their shadows with the green forest.
They do not listen
to the nearby cannon’s roar––
will not imagine
that their life together,
so new,
might
not
stretch
into
the
future.
When he looks at his pocket watch,
someday children
ringing a well-stocked table
vanish in
her imagination.
He lifts his musket to his shoulder,
trying to believe
in a future
and in it,
this memory:
two shadows
joined as one,
invisible against
the forest wall.
Prompt words today are green, bend, shadow, cannon and memories.
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.
