Morning Walk

 We left early

For our walk
My dog and I, following her nose
Through the last of the hay
Spun to gold by the rising sun.
Headed down toward the river
Where the water makes music
Running over limestone rocks.
Rocks that hold prints
Of lives lived long, long ago.
Trails up the hill, into the woods
Tell tales of comings and going.
Voices whisper through the trees
Rushing off on the breeze.
We’ve come a long way,
My dog and I.
But I know where I am.
I’m lost in my imagination
Following my dog’s nose.

Julie Creighton, yourdailypoem.com, January 19, 2021 

The Shimmering Hours

There is so much

I want to say,

as if the saying

could prepare you

for this path,

as if there were anything

I could offer

that would make your way

less circuitous,

more smooth.

 

Once you step out

you will see for yourself

how nothing could have

made you ready for this road

that will take you

from what you know now

to what you cannot perceive

except, perhaps,

in your dreaming

or as it gives a glimpse

in prayer.

 

But I can tell you

this journey is not

about miles.

It is not about how far

you can walk

or how fast.

 

It is about what you will do

with this moment, this star

that blazes in your sky

though no one else

might see.

 

So open your heart

to these shimmering hours

by which your path

is made.

 

Open your eyes

to the light that shines

on what you will need

to see.

 

Open your hands

to those who go with you,

those seen

and those known only

by their blessing, their benediction

of the road that is

your own.

Jan Richardson, thewisdomteachings.org, December 31, 2020 

The Unbroken

 

There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open
to the place inside which is unbreakable
and whole
while learning to sing.

Rashain Rea, janicefalls.wordpress.com, February 2017

Joy to the World

 Dear Mr. Bus Driver,

I am so sorry it has taken more than forty years
To apologize on behalf of the 60-something
Sixth graders, teachers and chaperones
Who surely shaved years off your life
While you drove us to and from someplace
I've long ago forgotten
For a field trip memorable only
For the following moments
Shared on your bus
In the spring of ’71.
We had transistor radios enough
To fill your bus with the sounds
Of WABC, the biggest, brashest
Top Forty Station
In the biggest, brashest city
In the nation
Which would play its number one song,
At least once every half hour,
Sometimes more if the song was huge,
Which this one was–
In the midst of
Seven whopping weeks atop
The almighty
Music Power survey,
Sandwiched between
Another two weeks
At number two!
So every twenty-some minutes
Between Ike and Tina, the Temptations
And the Partridge Family,
Those organ chords
Wrenched the attention
Of every sixth grader, teacher, and chaperone
From whatever we were doing
To on cue
Scream:
JEREMIAH WAS A BULLFROG!

Tony Gruenewald, yourdailypoem.com, February 19, 2021

The Best Thing I Did

The best thing I did
for my mother
was to outlive her

for which I deserve
no credit

though it makes me glad
that she didn't have
to see me die

Like most people
(I suppose)
I feel I should
have done more
for her

Like what?
I wasn't such a bad son

I would have wanted
to have loved her as much
as she loved me
but I couldn't
I had a life a son of my own
a wife and my youth that kept going on
maybe too long

And now I love her more
and more

so that perhaps
when I die
our love will be the same

though I seriously doubt
my heart can ever be
as big as hers

Ron Padgett, Collected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2011) 

Root Growth

 I message my sister and tell her I don’t try

to start seedlings anymore since they always die
when I take them outside, and she replies,
“Every day look at them and jostle them,
brush your hand over them to give them
the sense of being outside in the wind.
It encourages root growth.
Eventually, you can open a window
so they experience real air.
Then they get to go outside for an hour or two.
Eventually, you can set them free and let them grow.”

My sister has raised two delightful children.
Every day she looked at them and jostled them,
brushed her hand over them to give them
the sense of being outside in the wind.
It encouraged root growth.
Eventually, she opened a window
so they experienced real air.
Then they got to go outside for an hour or two.
Eventually, she set them free and let them grow.

Now I am sheltering in place far from them.
Every day I look at them and jostle memories,
brush my hand over photos
to give myself the sense
of being outside in the wind.
It encourages root growth.
Eventually, I can open a window
and experience real air.
Then I will go outside for an hour or two.
Eventually, I will be free and will have grown.

Joan Wiese Johannes, LOCKDOWN 2020, compiled by Robin Barrat

A Prayer for Coming Home

 

A Poem for Ash Wednesday

O True and Ever-Living God

I repent of all my false and empty gods

I look again into the closets of my life

      my mind, my heart

      to see what rules me.

Whom do I serve?

What are the possessions,

      the people, the opinions,

      the events,

      that control my life?

 

O Welcoming One

I see you standing at the door

      of my heart

      waiting for me

You gaze at my strange gods

      with an eye of compassion.

 

I am ashamed to invite you

      into my cluttered house

      yet my heart aches

      to be at home with you

 

My hand is reaching for the door

I hear myself saying, Come on in

I have more room than I thought I had

Come on in, and be the only God in my life.

May this moment of homecoming last forever.

 

Macrina Wiederkehr, Seasons of Your Heart (HarperCollinsPublishers, 1991)

Hymn of a Fat Woman

 

All of the saints starved themselves.

Not a single fat one.

The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same

Latin root.

 

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones

or shards of stained

glass or Christ carved

on his cross.

 

Hard

as pew seats. Brittle

as hair shirts. Women

made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted

wooden chest. Women consumed

by fervor.

 

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast

down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.

They must have slipped with ease through the eye

of the needle, leaving the weighty

camels stranded at the city gate.

 

Within that spare city’s walls,

I do not think I would find anyone like me.

 

I imagine I will find my kind outside

lolling in the garden

munching on the apples.

 

Joyce Huff, Project 180, Poem 094, February 04, 2021

The Unlikely Intimacies of Airport Security

Someone’s socks are unrolled, one by one.

Ahead of me, a stranger stands exposed

to the camera’s stripping eye. A traveller

 

lifts her arms as though to dance, her partner

keeps the rhythm with her hands, tap-tapping

softest underarms, pat-patting downwards,

 

waist to knee. The secrets of a wash-bag spill.

A wrist watch ticks in a plastic tray.

I re-thread my belt, adjust my clothes,

 

beside a man I’ve never met, who does

the same. Complicit in this brief coincidence,

our shoes reclaimed, we lift our bags and walk away.

Sharon Flynn, The Bangor Literary Journal, Issue 13 

The Country

 

I wondered about you

when you told me never to leave

a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches

lying around the house because the mice

 

might get into them and start a fire.

But your face was absolutely straight

when you twisted the lid down on the round tin

where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

 

Who could sleep that night?

Who could whisk away the thought

of the one unlikely mouse

padding along a cold water pipe

 

behind the floral wallpaper

gripping a single wooden match

between the needles of his teeth?

Who could not see him rounding a corner,

 

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,

the sudden flare, and the creature

for one bright, shining moment

suddenly thrust ahead of his time—

 

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer

in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid

illuminating some ancient night.

Who could fail to notice,

 

lit up in the blazing insulation,

the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces

of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants

of what once was your house in the country?

 

Billy Collins, wenaus.org, June 30, 2019

Entangled

                                           for Loki

There you were behind the chain-link fence
in the cold concrete stall,
and I guess you thought
I was the one you’d been waiting for.
You jumped up so I had to notice
the movement, then the shine
of your eyes. I had come
for someone else,
but it was clear I was mistaken.
 
You knew right away,
but I wasn’t ready to commit.
I kept thinking of you,
returned the next day
hoping you hadn’t been taken.
I took you home just like that,
ran a bath. You let me touch you
and I felt no fear. Together now,
we washed away the shelter grime
and I trimmed the tangles. I trusted you
and you became my home.

Betsy Mars, yourdailypoem.com, February 5, 2021 

An Ode to Oldies DJs

For all the classic songs you play, for all those memories

forever tied to British rock, falsetto harmonies,
plus psychedelic rock and pop, and Motown,  R&B…
we Boomers are most grateful for your musicology.

You comfort us on darkest days, and share laughs in between,
update us on our favorite bands—you know how much they mean.
Your pleasant voice, your warmth and wit, your knowledge unsurpassed
provide the perfect showcase for those great hits from the past.

While hairdos, clothes, and cars have changed, those memories we treasure
are kept alive by songs we want to listen to forever.
When news is bad, when life goes wrong, the right song offers healing;
it lifts our hearts, it makes us smile, it soothes and leaves us feeling

invincible, like we’ll survive, like everything’s okay—
the way we used to feel when we were young, back in the day.
So here’s to you, beloved, noble emcee of the air:
Keep those records spinning; you have listeners everywhere!

Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, yourdailypoem.com, January 20, 2021 

Presence

The year has rocked this world to its roots.
What if for one day each being put down
their burdens, their words of hate, their inhumanity
and breathed in the presence?
Stopped fighting for history, for fears, hopes, dreams
and stood facing the morning sun
letting the warmth of the moment
and the next, the next, accumulate like dust at their feet.
Listened instead of spoke, acknowledged truth,
embraced silence.

What if for one day each being acknowledged the fear
and let it go? Suspended beliefs,
opened their arms, drew strength
through earth, grass, rock, sand
Found the sparrow singing from a lone bush
the small heart-shaped cloud
Felt the currents of air wash over them, mingle
with the breath, and let the seams unravel
borders blend, walls dissolve
and be as
one.

Melissa Shaw-Smith, janicefalls.wordpress.com, December 30, 2020 

Do You Love Me?

 

She's twelve and she's asking the dog,

who does, but who speaks

in tongues, whose feints and gyrations

are themselves parts of speech.

 

They're on the back porch

and I don't really mean to be taking this in

but once I've heard I can't stop listening. Again

and again she asks, and the good dog

 

sits and wiggles, leaps and licks.

Imagine never asking. Imagine why:

so sure you wouldn't dare, or couldn't care

less. I wonder if the dog's guileless brown eyes

 

can lie, if the perfect canine lack of abstractions

might not be a bit like the picture books

she "read" as a child, before her parents' lips

shaped the daily miracle of speech

 

and kisses, and the words were not lead

and weighed only air, and did not mean

so meanly. "Do you love me?" she says

and says, until the dog, sensing perhaps

 

its own awful speechlessness, tries to bolt,

but she holds it by the collar and will not

let go, until, having come closer,

I hear the rest of it. I hear it all.

 

She's got the dog's furry jowls in her hands,

she's speaking precisely

into its laid-back, quivering ears:

"Say it," she hisses, "say it to me."

Robert Wrigley, Poetry 180, Poem No. o93, January 29, 2021

BLK History Month

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

 

Nikki Giovanni, Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002) 

The Dream of Freedom

 

Freedom, the long forgotten dream,          
Do you remember?
Shining in the morning, just a distant gleam,
What was it that you wanted,
And are you as you seem?

Is it you that lost it, careless in your ways,
Or was it everyone
A sacrifice freely given, to make for better days,
Was it worth it?
And are we better off now, here in this modern haze?

What is the price of freedom, dream though it may be?
Security and comfort,
That is the question isn’t it? so now we start to see,
Subtly it happens,
We lose our dreams of freedom, and join society.

But is that the way it is, or just what we’ve been told?
Who made those rules,
Do we have to sell our freedom, for another person’s gold?
Why?
Society gives no security,  and its gilt is chipped and old.

But the world is much the same, as when we turned our eyes,
Downward,
There are still the forests, rivers, deserts, seas, and skies,
Reminders,
That freedom's just forgotten and maybe plagued with lies.

Don’t we all still see it, in the morning light?
Hope
Don’t we all still feel it, as evening turns to night?
Peace
Don’t let freedom be forgotten, it’s not to sell for comfort,
It is our human right.

Janet Doyle, hellopoetry.com, August 2020