Waiting Room

Waiting Room

The woman in the bunny pants
is  most patient of the patients;

waiting seems her nature.

Maybe these appointments 
have become her only outing.

She's going out among 'em, 
as my old dad used to say.

Among whom, I always wondered;
now I know: the dead, the dying,
the sinner sick of sinning, 
the patient weight of living 
all too much like drowning.

Young and Easy

Yesterday was the birthday of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. It was the power of Thomas's poetry that snared me at seventeen. I've been lost in poems ever since. Now much older than he lived to be, I fool around at writing, but really, I'm just a great audience for real poets. 

Kerry at IGRT reminded me of Dylan Thomas's birthday, so I blame her for this:

YOUNG AND EASY

on reading Dylan Thomas in October

And so,

The gifts that sift and fall

On fallow ground

Grow old and spotted

As October's rose

Or the hand that holds them now.

Unyoked, you plow plant reap

Fine wheat.

Too soon, too young

You scatter, seed, outrun

The dying sun.

Caves of Ice

 Caves of Ice

If I could make a cave of words,

Untangle skeins of thought

And shape a cool blue icy haven,

I would surround myself as in Merlin's day.

If I could fashion thought into a lake,

I would eschew the fires of life

For numbing ice, for solace in suspension.

If I could penetrate the deep with this,

And words alone protect me from my sin,

Then I would say let frost begin its holy work.

Turn burning springs of strife to caves of ice.

Hannah at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads brought us this photo and a challenge to write about caves. Go to IGRT to dive inside other poetic caves.

Burning Leaf

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet and playwright, ardent feminist 

Burning Leaf

How simple and how hard is this:

To see the grass,

To only touch the flowers,

To feel the sun ,

To not bow under boulders,

To know which light is yours,

To follow it back home.

Poets United challenges us to write about a poet we adore...hence, meet Miss V. 

Erasure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

artwork used by permission of Catrin Welzstein

in association with d'Verse Poets

 

 

 

ERASURE

 

I am gone, and this goes on

You have your smoke

The girls talk quietly about their lives

I am not here, but this goes on

Up and down the yard

The children run

Juliet picks flowers

As the sun begins to fade

Someone clears the plates

This goes on and I am gone

The way your smoke dissipates above,

Gone the way of dandelion fuzz.