Quartets of Memory
To what extent
do you lament
losing the blush
of teenage crush?
Tease and chuckle,
tight-gripped knuckle,
that challenge of
teenage love—
to cultivate
a future mate—
dawdling where
a certain stare
might meet with yours.
These sweet amors
left in the past,
nonetheless last.
Some afternoons
listening to tunes
of a past kind,
they come to mind.
Prompt words today are knuckle, challenge, lament, cultivate, dawdle. Image by Eric Krull on Unsplash.
His Hopes: Love Messages
Long after sleep is over and you’ve made your morn’s retreat,
I find an image of your kiss pressed into my sheet.
It summarizes passion and the pounding beat
of two dazzled lovers united in their heat.
I gently kiss your absent lips and smooth the cover neat,
hoping that tonight you will return for a repeat.
Prompt words today are sleep, summarize, dazzle, beat, lipstick.
First Caress
Like that exquisite tension between first caress
and the dropping of shoe and removal of dress.
Like that mellow first stirring of love and desire
that creates a friction that flares into fire.
Appetites that merit no dish or no spoon
enjoyed under covers and the light of the moon.
Each generation discovers anew
That first caress and the drop of a shoe.
Prompt words today are exquisite, tension, merit, desire, generation, mellow.
When Fandango asked us to reblog a blog from the past, I had over 9,000 to choose from, and for some reason I chose this one.
For Fandango’s Flashback Friday, we are to repost a blog from the past.
Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.
Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.
Why do I want you?
The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.
After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.
All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.
The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.
Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken
and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every…
View original post 10 more words
Elopement
The sky liquid amber and the hills mushroom brown,
we sail on love’s vapors right over the town.
Once we felt dirty, but now we feel free,
released from the rules learned at the knee
of parents who left us with nothing but scars
of guilt over kisses in back seats of cars.
We vow to forget all we’ve heard of their lies
as we flee solid earth to escape through the skies.
What was once key we admit has no power
as passion bursts out to bud and then flower.
Those flickers of guilt we shed as we fly,
leaving mere earth to soar up to the sky.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 571 the prompts are: mushrooms key liquid admit dirty felt flicks hear amber solid Image: Marc Chagall’s “Over the Town.”
Smiled At
The effervescence of your smile
has me soaring mile on mile.
I’m tremulous within your bubble,
It’s elementary. I’m in trouble!
I travel on the lift of you,
billowy in glimmer’s hue.
Transparent from the very start
in what I carry within my heart.
It was as though, once trapped indoors,
you opened in me all the doors.
And now I float out, high and free,
bearing your smile along with me.
Prompts today are effervescence, elementary, tremulous, indoor, glimmer, billowy.
Lalibela
I kiss the map where memories lie in the vast stillness of the past.
Your broad laugh silenced so long ago that no remnants of it last.
What I had felt and hoped to see mirrored on your joyful face
was demonstrated as you drew me into our first long embrace.
Sparrows swoop those ancient halls where we loved and laughed and talked,
but only whispers of our love echo the chambers where we walked.
That holy place where we first kissed—the ancient pulpit that we found
buried deep within the earth—religious zeal gone underground.
Corridors carved from living stone that could not check the carver’s zeal
foretold my resolution to resist denying what I feel
so many long years afterwards, when lacking sense and reason,
I remember those short months when love bloomed out of season.
Prompt words for Sunday Whirl’s Wordle 568 are: sparrows vast stillness hope face silent check pulpit lack whisper kiss map
Tryst
I try to breathe the mountains as I travel through the night.
The reaching arms of towering trees no terrors do ignite.
The growls of hidden creatures as I challenge their domain
build my determination and strengthen my disdain.
The moon and stars will light my way until the coming dawn.
No regrets erase my firm resolve to journey on.
My skin relays the message that relieves all my distress,
as it receives the comfort of the evening wind’s caress.
A whip-poor-will calls out to me from its perch above
that the very night protects me as I proceed toward my love.
Prompts for The Sunday Swirl Wordle 567 are: build challenge erase skin growl firm
night regrets until breathe mountains try
Belvedere
Strolling through the belvedere at sunset, just with you,
I pretended that I’d brought you here for the uncanny view.
Yet I really formed a rapt audience of one.
You are the only view I seek when the day is done.
I’m just your part time lover, and yet I must confess
that when I see your line of jaw, your hair braid or your dress,
it catapults my heart into regions that are new.
I’d like to make a wallpaper of visions just of you
so that all the whole day long, whatever I might do,
I could live forever surrounded by your view.
Prompt words today are part time, Belvedere, catapult, wallpaper, audience and uncanny.
She Passes By
Each variation in your eyes
betrays their normal veiled disguise.
Wistfully they follow one
by whom you have been undone.
As they follow, hither and nigh
each time your former love walks by,
she who trampled on your heart
once more upsets the apple cart
and affection tumbles out
and draws you like a waterspout,
wistfully to tumble there,
your tender hopes high in the air.
But false illusions must fall to earth
where they discover their true worth
as they are trampled into earth.
Prompt words today are eyes, tender, trample, nigh, variation, wistfully.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 