Free Falling
I stood on the brow of the mountain
watching clouds cast shadows below me.
Vultures were gliding on warm currents of air.
As I watched, a single yellow leaf released its grip from
a bare tree branch, twirling in a free fall of delight.
Month: October 2023
Tell Us
Tell Us
Tell us your stories
so that, in the telling, we
may begin to understand
the beauty of your lives
Sing us your songs
so that, in the singing, we
may begin to hear the
beating of your hearts
Read us your poems
so that, in the reading, we
may begin to glimpse the
tenderness of your souls
Show us your art
so that, in the seeing, we
may begin to know the
wonders of your minds
Meet the Bar by writing from a collective point of view
Secret Messages
Secret Messages
She emptied her heart.
Wrote all her secrets on little
slips of paper and put them in
old glass bottles she found
buried in her garden.
She carried them, in a cardboard box,
to the sea where she set them free –
a flotilla of her deepest thoughts, her
fears, her longings. All the things she
could no longer hold. She waved goodbye
as they bobbed away with the tide and
made a wish that whoever finds them
will know what to do with them.
—
Writer’s Digest Wednesday Poetry Prompt 674 – write a secret poem
Cat Nap
Cat Nap
This poem would like to fold
itself up, like a napping cat,
curl its tail over its eyes,
block out the raucous world.
This poem is tired of scribbling
words of peace that don’t work –
lines of ink that fade before its eyes.
Quadrille #186 – Fold
The Collector
The Collector
She collects old bottles that she
finds buried in her garden,
and places them on a windowsill.
When the sun shines in, her kitchen
is filled with a kaleidoscope of colors –
blues and greens and browns. Bottles
from old remedies for headaches and
stomach aches, laundry bleach, and ketchup.
Smooth bottles, square bottles, tiny bottles,
one that still has a piece of rotting cork
in its neck. Bottles that tell a story of hard work
and pain. She feels like an archeologist discovering
a lost way of life through the colored glass
detritus of another generation, and she wonders what
future generations will think of her when they
uncover the bits of her life left behind.
Haunted
Canned Memories
Canned Memories
The days have grown shorter and
there is a chill hovering around the
last of the Maple leaves, as they dangle
listlessly from the branches that nourished them
Thoughts turn to all things warm – sweaters and
blankets and soup. My freezer is stocked with
containers of tomato soup made from the
fruit of our garden. Ripened by the sun, picked
and peeled, chopped and simmered with garlic and
basil and onion – ready to warm the body when
Winter makes itself at home, here.
But the soup that warms my soul with memories
is the kind that came in a red and white can, the one
made famous by Andy Warhol. The soup my mother
served for lunch with small round crackers and a
cup of hot chocolate.
Poetics: Time for Soup!
Five Ways to Cross a Lake
Five ways to Cross a Lake
1 sit on the edge of the old wooden dock
with your toes dangling in the water
until you feel nothing
but the ancient ice that
is slowly melting
2 let your eye find the red
eye of a loon as it glides past
as if pulled by a string –
hidden feet walking under
the choppy surface
3 cast your heart out as far as
its tether allows and watch it sink
below the surface. Hold your breath
until it bobs back to the surface,
then slowly reel it in
4 put your thoughts on a leaf and let
them float away to become yellow hills
on the pebbled beach of your mind-
each one smoothed by the careless
touch of the waves
5 catch the wind as it pushes the water
to another time and place and then meet
it on the way back. Write it into a poem
that soars above the clouds and
touches down on some distant shore
MTB: Writing The Five Directions
rhymeswithbug 