September 11, 2019

I wrote the text below on the one year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. I re-read this every year, and today, its message rings so true… “at a time in our history where the world is truly small, we can no longer allow our self appointed interests and egos to drive our actions within this world community“… Please read. God bless us all.

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Scattered Light – a collection

Hello my friends – please forgive the intrusion, but I have just published a collection of poetry entitled “Scattered Light”, and I owe my deepest gratitude to all of you and this wonderful poetry forum.

You have provided such wonderful support and kind words of guidance over the years. It has been through this forum and by way of your heartfelt encouragement that I managed to motivate myself to get this done. Thank you all so very much.

Liberty’s Lament

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

I stand alone agape in horror, my heart beat racing as voices o’er the sea and land decry in throes, “Liar! Temptress!” sustained echoes that bend their eyes upon my stead, recounting words I’ve loved and said, “Give me your tired, your poor, your tost”, meant in truth but somehow lost.

The Circus

Trepidation tempered only by our anxious gait, as scent of cotton candy pulsed within the Oompa’s drifting plait. Down the leading path we walked, skipped and ran in anxious talk, giggling nervous hopes out loud until we spied the circus’ crowd!

Recollection – First Days of School

Bright, this morning’s fatal point,
as down the lane I walk,
edges brilliant, sharply lined,
denying summer’s lazy stalk.

Midst starch and press just oversized,
welcoming spurts of growth,
my awkward steps approach the fields
where friends resound in languished mope.

The Hours Between

Until We Meet Again

The hours in between the seconds freeze a life in coy suspense,
drifting softly heaps of heart and soul across the present tense,
passing in a standstill,
bowing to the better wind,
denying temporal whispers spinning dreams of time and space again…

Brevity

Time slips in sips of passing vibrant life
as age bends to tend this quiet immortal wife,
yet waits escape in poignant water’s cool relief
drawn to shallows hallowed shore, counting out the brief
spent lives, resting on the oars.

photo courtesy of public domain

Distant Rain

Sensual lines above the plain,
seductive curves of coming rain,
poised o’er sweetened fields of corn
whose tassels, golden, so adorn the jasmine jade and green.

Change

Eternal spiral feeding,
soul and life returned,
drifting through the ashes,
another year so aptly burned.

Changing only morsels,
mixed amongst the grandest sweeps
of what it was, how it was,
and where it haunts the things it keeps.

Galaxy

Be still sweet love, my heart be thine,
yet in this breaking moment trips,
for here suspended ‘midst the stars
are hidden dreams in furrowed rifts.

Werewolf’s Lament

Through lonely streets and alleys dank, dewy cold and sorely rank I slink away from revel’s call, pressed in fear against the wall of red bricked points that lead the way to secret blinds where I can stay safely hid from what I fear will call tonight within the drear of hallows eve, of tricks and treats, of screams and cries in haunted streets, beneath the swollen moon.

October Lea

Strewn across the empty lea,
in ribbon frayed and broken,
a tiny path runs from the woods,
in steps of time, in whispers spoken.

The summer grass recedes in bows,
homage to the years gone by,
demarking every thought there,
every mark a cobbled sigh.

The Inexplicable Story

As recalled by Geoffrey Chaucer while traveling with the Queen

“Hold fast the lantern Beauregard, her lifted skirt sees light of day!”,
while as I told the dog to sit, I looked the other way.

For all is right in Flanders when castles turn to shades of poor,
but things just got sidewayser, when once her panties hit the floor…

The Elm, the Dusk, and the Nightingale

Day recoils in silence. Autumn’s warmth gives way to dusk.
Beneath this meadow’s elm I pause, released in freedom from the husk of what this life’s become.
Summer wanes in crescent waves shaped to crash on winter’s shore,
haunting sweeter memories, from here within my open door as soul reflects the sum.

The Marker

How did the stain of past life find its place upon this silent grave?
What aged the emerald crescent’s arc, kindly blotched the written stave?

What of its words and heartfelt kiss
that left a summer’s rain amiss?

Summer Shade

Waste not this rapturous seed content to revel in the summer sun,
but to the cooling grass beneath, beside cool water’s run.
Embrace in arms’ lock, tangled hair, breathe a kiss of sweet love made,
enrapt in velvet green beneath strong arms of kind elm’s shade.

To Life!

Spill me o’er the crystal falls where eons stretch to hold!
Kindly beckon courage from the iron will in stories told!

Grant me one last flight on wings above the alpine valleys low!
Spill my heart between the seams where mountain shadowed waters flow!

Carousel

 

Standing in a summer’s mist,
early morning heat and dew,
a carousel abandoned,
ebbing from a fairground’s stew.

Garden Bench

Golden ochre steeped in time,
aged by every season’s crime,
twined through burnished lacquer’s rust,
recalling each last sunray’s lust,
and every blue jay’s call…

Dragon’s Tails

Tucked among the southern pines,
seams of road in shadowed lines,
rend the compass pause, despair,
dissolves to solve the anywhere my journey longs to hold.

Visible

Silent now, this moment’s pause, bathed in ochre’s tinge of red,
revealing histories’ flaxen stitch, stretched through pin pricks long since bled.
Day lies still around me, ‘cross rustic echoes this past enfolds,
suspends my eye along the line where every memory’s story is told.

Fern in Spring

Beneath the gentle dew of spring, I wait…
Resolved to yearning, lengthening my patience in this state…
Droplets hold their morning spark, all my world reflected here,
as sunbursts gain corona gold, horizon’s azimuth waxing near…

The Willow of Spring Creek

Held at bay through length of day, dismissed by early spring,
yet frost and cold deny there hold beneath sun’s burgeoning.

Splashing leaflets grace her locks poised in grace above the brook,
begging soft the warming soil with every sun beam’s kissing look.

An Angel’s Lament

Find me, where lonesome weeping echoes drift across the battlefield.
Find me, beyond the graves of fellows, whose wounds were never healed.
Find me, when only silent hearses search the lea for those who might remain.
Find me, upon the crest of death himself, within the blood there dried and stained.

Ink Me!

This page defies my aching pen, smears the blotted stain I rend from out its holy genie’s lamp, cold and coughing, moist and damp… yet here between each stolen pause, I dance, I sing, I gestate cause to linger long in separation, bound to morsel’s reparation caught between elixir’s truth… sipped again, glazed in proof…. Aha!

Winter Whispers (the Dream)

There between the fir’s snowed branches, whispers haunt in winter’s dance,
“Hush!”, she cried in rare defiance, “their whispered dreams don’t come by chance!”

New Beginning

Enrapt, her burgeoned soul arose,
born in diamond’s white draped hues,
birthed of summer’s countenance rent,
shadows hidden, whispered clues.
Love’s long fire adrift in ash,
cooling, mending, flames of heart,
bathing amber locks of hair,
free in hope of what may start…
… and what may come anew.

Last Ride – Lament

The moments drag on slowly,
melancholy their shuffling by,
no caring, no stir, no spark, no ember,
no flirting, courting, dancing sigh…