I
When you leave we’ll smile
and I’ll say ‘see you later’
though we know I won’t.
II
‘So long’ you call out
as if anticipating
the roads before us.
III
I bid you ‘farewell’
with no remorse or regret.
Fare thee well my friend.
#90
Category: A New Poem Every Morning
Fibonacci Rules
I?
I
do
not
think
that form
poetry is a less
valid expression of true
emotion or insight than vers libre poems,
do you? There is a symmetry
to it. Fibonacci
makes our
poems
fit
to
a
t
#89
Fibonacci – the sum of the number of letters in the last two lines equals the number of letters in the next line (I also reversed this). So start with 0 and 1, 0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5 etc….(1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21…)
Seasons of Love
Our love sings to my heart
in the trickling chuckle of a redwing blackbird
proclaiming the promise of a dawning spring.
Our love clings to my heart
with the sweet scent of lilacs, nodding, langourous
in the still warmth of a summer garden.
Our love plays on my heart
like a phantom melody at the edge of memory,
and the sound of leaves falling.
Our love cradles my heart
as a layer of snow protects the slumbering lilac,
patiently awaiting the seasons of love.
#89
Spring is a Tease
Spring strips down to bare dirt,
all warm, sunny smiles and promises
of flowers ‘round my door
and the next day huddles under
a thick white parka,
frigid and snarling.
Spring is a tease.
#87
Leave Breadcrumbs
Never trust an early spring,
a lover who works late,
or directions that end in “you can’t miss it”.
Because you can.
You can miss it so fast that one day you look up
and it’s so gone that you almost
forget you ever had it.
You can miss it so easily that one day you turn around
and it’s so not there that you nearly
doubt it ever was.
You can miss it so deeply that one day you wake up
and it’s so far away that you might
think it was just a dream
Bring a sweater.
Change the locks.
Write your own directions.
Leave breadcrumbs.
#86
The Moment in Forever
How we used to travel.
We would pack up the equipment and a suitcase
and just drive,
map on my knee,
radio playing a good old song,
your left elbow resting on the edge
of the open window.
You always had a driver’s sunburn
on your left arm.
You wore shades and a hat and
a confident cowboy smile
and time slowed down and
spun around us and if I had to choose
a moment to live in forever it would be
driving deserted prairie roads,
sun beating down,
Hank on the radio,
you at the wheel,
me at the map,
the world spread out before us.
#85
Jading the Emerald
St Patrick’s Day dawns
and I contemplate a stroll down the
ancestral branch to the Irish twig.
(My name used to be Connell, you know).
Not much is known of the paternal lineage,
although in recent days some rumours have started
that the Connell clan sprouted from
a Scots branch, not an Irish one.
Not that I hold any grudges against the Scots,
my most excellent partner hails from that twig,
but I’ve become quite comfortable with my Irish roots,
twined in a Celtic knot around my heart.
I will not drink green beer today,
or wear any article of clothing
emblazoned with an invitation to
“Kiss me I’m Irish”.
Instead I will exhume my tenuous heritage,
hold it up to the light of a newly dawned,
St Patrick’s day morning, and
delight in the emerald refractions as they
play up and down the ancestral branch.
But if I wear green today it will be Canadian jade.
#84
Not a Sonnenizio*
I tried to write a poem in that form,
adopt a line and cleverly disguise
the echoed word that weaves a cloth unseen,
a tapestry where flecks of colour rise,
surfacing in different forms and meanings,
piquing our poetic predilection
for novel constructs growing from the roots
of established form and past perfection.
And although I’ve written poems before
where words repeat and lines are strictly rhymed
Somehow I couldn’t find a way to start
I couldn’t force myself to use a line
that some other poet penned before me
and subvert that poet’s true intention
by warping it into my weft of words
by making it my own by some extention.
Can’t write a sonnenizio for you
Instead I wrote the poem above, in lieu.
#83
*Sonnenizio: a form invented by Kim Addonizio where the first line is taken from someone else’s sonnet then one word from that line is repeated in each of the subsequent 13 lines, ending in a rhymed couplet.
Show Me a Story
Show me a story.
I want to see what you’ve seen,
be where you’ve been.
Leave me a trail of words like
breadcrumbs, tender morsels
pointing the way through the woods.
Show me a story.
I want to smell what you’ve smelt
feel what you’ve felt.
I’ll spin around blindfolded
while you shout out
“cold, warm, hot – very hot. Or not.”
Show me a story.
I want to hear what you’ve heard
Fear what you’ve feared.
I am a child, waiting in the dark
outside of your window
whispering “Marco?”
#82
Things That are Worth Forgetting
The clever, cruel words that never escaped your lips and
the ones that did escape someone else’s,
the directions to despair,
and the fact that only a whisp of air separates us
from the cold blackness of space.
#81
Linda Studley 