Tag: Poetry

The Shape of Summer

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The longest day of the year starts like many others,
Warmth, wind, light through the window. 

Mind quiet, there's one image from a dream.
One tree rooting, spreading, rippling in a half grown field. 
You must tend that field

Because it’s summer.

Solstice, not spring and fall equinox, bookends for the growing season. 
Not the fallow darkness of winter.
Summer, the middle months where the year’s threads weave together, still taking shape.
The place where imagination has taken you, but not yet left you.
The summer when there is light and warmth and life is a petri dish for productivity.

The Oddest Things Happen When Mrs. Potts Takes a Walk.

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Trees gather like a fairy ring around a fallen trunk.
Elephants gather to mourn their dead.
They trumpet the loss.
They stay for long enough that the sky
Turns color on multiple days.

Mrs. Potts changes the color 
Of her dress from brown to blue to black.
She walks the neighborhood
To distract herself. She nods hello.
She makes everyone feel safe.

Mrs. Potts firmly says, “I do not believe in fairies.
Elves, yes.” Elves clean her kitchen at night.
They almost never sleep.
Like Mrs. Potts herself, they are creatures of habit.
They gather by fallen trees, like elephants.

The Dark Reign of Winter

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Stride, stride, stride in rhythm, thunder, lightning, falling rain.
Sky dark bursts of water, soggy, wet, boggy, cold
Slow, slow, slow on reaching shelter, comfort, hearth and home
Build a fire, light it quick, make a pyre, a righteous pile
Of all that grieves, grieves, grieves a dark heart,
A burdened heart, weighed with sorrows, like bombs exploding
In black bursts of regret, regret, regret no solace yet.
Slowly warmth creeps through the air, beauty erupts in licks of varicolored flame.
Familiar objects tug, tug, tug at memory,
Filled with thoughts of times past when life was ours, and freedom.

Three AM Thoughts After Listening to a Zoom Featuring Robert Haas

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We met on the mountain at the halfway point between up and down. 
Hard-packed dirt bordered by scrappy shrubs 
and occasional candy wrappers, 
the path slid into loose gravel,
washboard erosion.
We braced, slowed, stopped. 
We stood face to face, more honest than when we fought,
voices raised in anger at slights so minor as to be unmemorable. 
We embraced, we wept, we sat on a boulder 
looked out on the sea, 
its azure blue, green, purple depths 
roiling, settling, welling up.
We wavered, pulled by the gravity of the moon and the earth.
We hovered between earth and sky.

The Subject is Words

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An avalanche of words slows. Letters pile to a stop. You sweep them into pages of prose, organize the words in sentences. The sentences describe familiar subjects. The subjects are coupled with tasty verbs that whet the appetite, the filling in a subject-object sandwich. Pair with a fruity adjective to finish.

Thoughts and feelings spring into paragraphs willy-nilly; words leap to the page in disorganized, repetitive chaos. It’s time to wind down and mine for meaning. A pot of gold waits at rainbow’s end. The end of patience, of an era, of the sentence, the end of the line. Edit.

Minnesota Nice Meet Minnesota ICE.

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Good said, “I’m not mad at you.” 
ICE said, “Fucking bitch.” Then he shot her. 
What would Freud say? 
Opposing instincts, 
Eros, the life force versus Thanatos, the death force. 

Comity versus violence. 
Consensus versus fascism.
What would Jesus say?
Turn the other cheek.
Like Martin Luther King, like Mahatma Gandhi, like Jesus himself.

What would George Harris III say?
Flower Power. Carry a carnation. Insert it into the barrel of a soldier’s gun. 
Hope they’re so surprised they forget to shoot you. 
But I’m mad. I want to bloody curse.
Choose life, choose love.

Don’t be mad, be transformative.

The New Year Just Like the Old Year

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Twas the night before New Year and all through the land, 
No glasses were empty, no noshes unplanned.
The mistletoe hung under doorways in clusters
Completely ignored due to long  filibusters.
Folks whispered and tittered 
They blistered and dithered,
All trying to force their opponents to wither.
These twisters of words, these sisters of shadow, 
Their blustery blows have me thinking of Maddow.
The night almost over, the cat cleaned her whiskers
And finished the dregs from the host’s brandy snifter. 
She loudly exclaimed as she stalked out of sight,
“The year has begun with no break from the fight.”

In a Post-Truth World, Nothing Matters ‘Til It Does.

Scream (1895) Edvard Munch by The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
Apprentice reruns, Quanon posts, bread and circuses.
The Freedom Caucus thrives in a MAGA echo chamber.
Imagine them in heated debate over dancing angels on pinheads.
Rapture them up, please, before it’s too late.
Deliver us, oh Lord, from this theocracy.

They’re loyal to a simple truth: Truth Social.
Grifts, disruption, distortions, self-serving tripe, confounding
Crap written by cowardly charlatans.
What they say is different
From what they do.

His Darkness says, “I am your retribution. The future belongs to us.”
He lies.
Lured by a MagaVerse siren song,
They believe him. 
They break things with no thought for rebuilding.

Ode to Kohnan

Photo by Monica McHenney
His eyes were open and stayed that way
Aware and dignified, right up to the end.
A mensch, reserved, not prone to delay, 
Loyal to a fault, on that you can depend.

Saucy he was in the final hours,
Demanded kibble, a last meal at midnight.
Poured out love, licks, and reassurance.

Despite his weak body, his power
Did prolong the end, enough so that we might
Say woof, shed our tears, take one last dance.

He knew it was the end. We, quite sure, thought that he would rally.
He lay quiet, dignified, a friend and most trusted ally.



A Quiet Morning

Photo by Kevin Menajang on Pexels.com
Exiled to the backyard,
While inside the termite inspector inspects,
Kohnan limps to the door,
Pleads with liquid brown eyes.
He doesn’t bark; has no energy for that these days.

“He’s friendly.” 
The inspector nods. Kohnan sidles in quietly.
He’s drawn blood.
He can be protective, even with friends.
Not now. Mornings he wakes up slowly in a fog of old age.

He’s at my feet, 
Moving his head to the sound of steps in the attic.
The sun falls in patterns, 
Warms my legs, his arthritic hips.
Warmth is welcome to us both, we’re grateful spring is coming fast.