Friday, January 13, 2012

Cloud/River

If death is a cloud,
then life is a river.
Same element, same mass
only the form changes.
If life is a river,
then death is a cloud.

Magic Recall

This poem is a response to a prompt at Poetry Jam, a photograph of a laughing elderly Polish American farm couple in 1940 New England. Both are laughing uproariously and he seems to be hitching up his pants. The prompt was to post both picture and poem. I don't know how to repost the picture so here is the poem.

You hitch up your pants.
Is your weight loss
caused by cancer?

Tears catch in my throat
Then you laugh, sharp
as morning rooster,fresh
as first spring thunder.
The magic works again.
We stand in the fields
rain-drenched, you stripped
to the waist, glistening gold,
seventeen, strong as stallion.
me your yellow daffodil, all
sunshine and tomorrows.
I laugh with you then,
before we know the graves
at which we will both cry,
the harsh winters, thin shoes,
before I know how much more
I will love you after the storms.
Magic works. I laugh with you now.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Sunday Wordle, Jauary 8

Not Forgotten

Breathing quickly,
hearts fluttering,
They kiss at the gate.
She gropes for words.
His words come bubbling
out by the thousands.
Each smile, touch, kiss
is a stone in the creek bed
polished by flood of feeling.
Each tenderness adds strength
to the shelter they thatch
together with hormones and hope.
Will this love flash and fade,
or will they build and rebuild
until it glows steady, warms
and feeds, hearth of home?

written for Brenda's Sunday Worldle The words we needed to include were: thatched, hearth, flash, rebuild, thousands, bubbling, forgotten.
I couldn't pull it off this time without changing some of the tenses and numbers.

Equalizer

Head lice
do not discriminate
among hosts.
Just have to be human.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Work

Sweat on neck.
Hauling wood
feels good.
Body still works.
Work satisfies.
Simple equation.
hauling wood
feels good.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Winter Palate

White on white, silver on silver,
mist over water, moon on bare tree,
Silhouette, outline, translucence,
owl over meadow, slow fade to morning,
infinite shades of grey, brown dance
to north wind's delicate demanding brush.
Scarlet flash of sudden cardinal sings
of vivid seasons packed away in paint box.