Sixteen Breaths of Fresh Air
There is nothing magical to death.
It simply is.
Death whispers us out of the world
in a breath as silent as the breath
that breathed us into it.
The magic in this world
sits in another place.
Joy and Exhalation,
Patient and Wonderful,
waiting in the nooks and crannies
of everyday.
Silent like death,
and the footsteps of mice,
and the sweet songs of lovers,
and the swaying of tall grass
and the secrets of children.
Mowing the Lawn
The summer grass is,
somehow
,still in abundance
in verdancy as
stretches of foot-high
stalks blow in the wind
carelessly tossing
their rebellious hair
and flaunting their
slender limbs to taunt
the neighboring yards.
It is as ifthey stretch for miles
“OOOKlahoma, where
the wind comes sweeping
down the plains,” or rather
my backyard.
I know I should mow,
perhaps HOA will come knocking,
the weeds may launch an attack
or cat may lose herself,
a lion stalking prey,
but the view
from a house-cage,
artificially cool is made
so much wilder by overgrown
stretches that bend light
with a gust of wind and
darker when still.
“OOOKlahoma, the wavin’
wheat sure smells sweet
when the wind comes
right behind the rain,”
in this marvel of a spring.
My backyard is Oklahoma,
wild and untamed by man and nature
my overgrown grass
stretches yards in breezes,
not yet yellow
and wilting under summer,
but still green
under tornado wake rain.
My grass waves its foot
long arms goodbye to
the season and
greeting summer.
I may as well let it run
wild in the last few weeks
of freedom.
Ceiling Fan
I love the beauty of a ceiling fan
when laying on the floor
looking up blankly
day dreaming about the future
crying about the past
meditating.
The shadow cast on the wall
so still and steady–ten
arms, legs strong while half
are dancing and
stretching into the world with
a constant, comforting hum.
When I was young I liked escaping.
I took up a pen and set out to discover what
I was so mad about and it worked in jumbled,
scribbled, and thankfully illegible pages of a journal.
To this day I write to discover and to chart my soul
and I think I’ve figured something out—although it is
a work in progress, as all things are and should always be.
You see, I think it is a human strength that we
cannot fully understand our own existence,
grasp our own motives, and know our own emotions.
It is our vast complexity and trek for discovery
that really keep us going.
It is our infinite weakness and confusion
that keep things interesting—a contradiction,
I know, but our obsession is with the quest
and not with the reward we claim to seek.
Knowledge is power, but wonder and intrigue
stem from its discovery and its journey.
Our lives would be empty if every map thought up—
the mountains of our inner thoughts, the plains
of a smile and a frown, the seas fraught with
kind eyes and cruel words churning erratically
because the tide is unknown…
When there remains nothing to chart,
every bookcase full, every
computer chip stored up with our so-called
omnipotence, we will slowly start to wilt
and fold in on ourselves; a flower quietly
closing it’s petals and saying goodbye to the day.
The swoop of a shut door and the silence behind it.
Once you believe you have all the answers
life ceases to interest you—time
becomes a constraint sent to bind you
in infinite boredom, but you are bored
not because you have all the answers,
but because you have ceased to look.
And to stop looking is to stop living
So do not allow the compass to stay
or your pen to still, because you,
You are the cartographer of your own life
and you have the tools to chart it,
Never stop charting your own soul
or trying to understand the souls of others.
Daydreams
I’m running out of dreams in days of thoughts
thoughts that take me to the reaches of space
to a blue bigger on the inside box
to everything that will be, is and was once
to every possible me, no mater how farfetched,
to every impossible me, far too farfetched
and foreign to the maps I’ve so long depended on.
I’ve blundered, in my thoughts, a disappearing act
of time and space, those wild concepts
between the synapses and regions of that vast map
that charts our souls and logs the latitudes of dreams
into what dangerous depths, so strange
are the longitudes of young and old and linear,
I pushed to the edges of the big flat world
sailing, myself, in wood or metal or air
on something old, new, borrowed, and blue
something evading my thoughts anew.
Life Line
Imagination sinks into its seat
finally beaten(O!so beat)
by life and all its worries
dealt a blow(crashing, it has)
lonely innocence,gone and passed
flails its arms drown,drowning
it breaks away(I wish I could)
let go of life-stale,I would I would
if it would come back,afloat
andfloat into the air,into the sky
I look into the sun,moon,so high
,so high and capture dandelion hope
whispering to air,so wanting
wanting to find a dreamer’s wishings
mind,imagination,bide time
together sinking,washing(the moon-tide)
swinging backandforth,sidetoside
trying to catch hopes, unawares
(the dandelion floats above
,catching on to the oceanwind shrug
falling in love,in love, in love)
*I had a lot of form problems with this. It was originally in four quatrains, but it seemed a bit too prose like. Not sure how much this has improved it form-wise, but it’s a start I suppose.
I Wonder…
I wonder when I will stop counting
the constellations and galaxies between us
since you left earth
and took to the stars,
looking back, looking down
at the life you counted down until take off.
I wonder if you’ll glance, now and then,
from the moon and miss the earth,
its infinite color, and wish
for rainbows instead of black holes,
those yellow roses you left in the garden.
Your white picket fence.
I wonder if the constllations and galaxies
are everything you thought they’d be from earth
hanging in the sky
so silent, so hot, so burning
calling you to the skies,
calling for take off.
I wonder, looking up at the great expanse,
blinking in white hot light
blurring edges between dippers and belts
if you see the same black burning
the great expanse, growing, glowing
and you wonder, keep wondering, too.
As much as I would love every single one of my poems to be deeply thoughtful, I simply cant crank them out like that. So this is just a little something I jotted down while sipping tea on my apartment porch this morning.
Musings Upon Waking Up
The sweet smell of freshly mowed grass
raises up through the summer air
and tickles my nose as it passess
along on the warm summer breeze.
I take a long sip of tea
letting the chill sooth the heat
and trickle down into my soul
as I open stale pages and wait
to hear the early morning swallows
to peak their hesitant heads out
and begin to sing, to bellow
the mourning songs of spring.
They too were taking note of the heat
wishing there were still a chill
to help ease the 85 degrees
that makes us al sweat until
we’re forced inside for refuge,
the sweet blow of air conditioning
and the calm circle of the fan.
This year will be a hot one.
Definitely a work in progress, but for now:
Reading Musings of Childhood Nostalgia
My hands linger on these pages
as if trying to take back
my childhood
even if just one word, one word
of something I know is gone.
I want these words to look as they did,
promise the same enchantment,
as I stay longing on this page
am I looking for answers?
Could I still make friends
with a Black Stallion,
when shipwrecked after raiding
a hooked captain’s ship
deep in the Wonderland
I found hidden in a wardrobe
or was it Platform nine and three quarters?
As I take a magic carpet into the sunset
not with a prince,
but with a friendly giant,
will animals guide me anywhere, anymore?
Magic, I miss
magic is what leaps into my mind
from these words, childhood’s words
but I no longer believe it
the way I did ten years ago or five.
Nostalgia is the word I find,
for the places this story
used to transport me
the first time,the second time,
the times I believed.
No, no.
I don’t think so,
My imagination has grown up
and these are no longer beliefs
but wistful musings.
Still, I’d rather let them take me
far away to lands un-inhibited
by thoughts of politics, economics…
Wendy returned from Neverland.
A smile returns to my face
hoping to travel away
as I turn the final page.
Watching a Hatchling Fall from Its Nest
There it was before her.
Death, in an instant
The clashing of life’s forces held
(Such contradictions)
There, before her, suspended.
It pulled her in as motion slowed,
Plucked her from her idle task
And held her stare in a blink,
Gazing, with a sense of injustice.
(But what has she been doing?)
What did it all mean?
Such cruelty passed in a moment,
Is this how life is meant, without notice?
Her mind, everything, dancing on a pin,
And Held before her.
(For her… but why?)
Had she in some way blundered,
Missed the meanings of myths and fables?
(a list, she remembered)
No, but it mustn’t be her,
The beauty she saw in death, the grace,
The moment, the awe. A mother’s greatest fear.
Then it was over.
Death floated in the air only for seconds,
The hatchling falling from its nest—
It struck the ground with silent force.
Puzzled, her mind returned to groceries.
