Rhymed and unrhymed, form or free, this is where the poetry lives.
I awoke to the moon,
like a giant, celestial snail creeping
across the night sky,
leaving a sparkling trail of light
in her wake.
Haunting the trees
with silver ghosts
and half forgotten memories
of full moons
and hard stars
and tender hearts.
#105
Frost feathers on leaves.
A last chance for withered ones
to be beautiful.
# 104
In the double paned window
I have two reflections.
existentially speaking, I am beside myself.
#103
Trees dream of summer too.
Of days filled with the laughter of tender leaves
and singing rain.
Alive with the heart beat of hummingbird wings
and the mingled perfume of warm earth,
wild flowers, and ripe berries.
Stripped and slumbering the trees bide, knowing
one day the sun will rise with new warmth,
the wind will have dulled his teeth
from gnawing on ice and snow,
and water will chuckle once more.
But for now, the trees sleep on,
visions of summer yet to be
safe within their rings.
#102
The ending of one thing can signal
the beginning of another and the beginning
of another bodes an eventual end
but maybe there are no beginnings or endings;
maybe they’re really all just middles
that occasionally speed up or slow down a little
to made us think we actually
have some sort of control over things.
We are always in the middle of something,
even if it’s nothing.
#101
Something is happening.
A beginning where I thought only endings lived.
An awakening from a long troubled sleep.
A quickening of synapses.
It is a moment to be seized,
an opportunity to be exploited
so don’t be surprised
if my goals and attitudes change
course. You are still
my oars and anchor,
my lodestone,
the star by which I steer,
my travelling partner of choice
forever.
#99
A chipmunk sat outside my window this evening
twitching his tiny tail.
Bright eyed, darting hither and yon
up and down the trail.
Then Stompy the squirrel lands on the roof
his army boots laced up tight
he starts training for a marathon,
and he stays at it all night.
A moose stood outside my window today
munching on willow tips.
Gawky yet graceful he nips and he nibbles
with soft, dark, velvet lips.
Then Stompy stops by and sits in a tree
and lets out a bloodcurdling shriek
a squeaked filibuster of epic proportions
that seems like it lasts a week.
A bear lumbered by my window one day
and peeked in as I peeked out
I jumped and he jumped and we both backed up.
I was too overawed to shout.
Then Stompy the squirrel moved in upstairs
and started to gnaw on the rafters,
scratching and scrabbling all through the night
like he’s digging a hole to hereafter.
So, do I like nature? Well you may ask
I like nature just fine…. Although
If I’m going to maintain my sanity
Stompy the Squirrel’s gotta go!
#97
When the sun rises
aspen skins blush with delight,
basking in the dawn.
#96
If necessity is the mother of invention
then imagination must be the dad.
Grandma must have been patience
and the grandfather must have had
a penchant for puttering in toolsheds
and building something from naught
so there might be a few aunts and uncles
who may not have turned out as they ought
(spare parts sometimes being scarce).
Perhaps there are siblings who taunted
invention when she was a child
and made her feel ugly and haunted
her self esteem till she doubted
her sense of her own self worth
so she kept her ideas to herself
instead of enriching the Earth
with her brilliant ideas and advances
bowing instead to her siblings
and inventing them new toys to play with
to quiet their whining and quibbling.
Then one day she looked in the mirror,
saw the person she knew she could be,
saw the dreams that she could believe in,
saw the things that she could achieve.
So at night now, when others are sleeping,
their toys all greedily clutching,
she works on her plans for new improved ways
to save the world from destruction.
#95
My words must stand alone
because I will not always be there to
illuminate their origins,
explain their motivation,
excuse their shortcomings.
I do not know where or how far they will travel
so they must go into the world prepared
to function without my assistance.
My words don’t come with illustrations or
extraneous instructions for operation.
They must provide that within themselves
or they are not complete.
I raised my children the same way.
#94
Just to be clear – the following doesn’t constitute instructions for the operation of this poem…lol. It’s just an aside that I thought would give you a chuckle.
My new version of MS Word doesn’t have a ‘Help’ button; instead it has an icon shaped like a light bulb with a prompt that reads “Tell me what you want to do”. I told it that I wanted to write a poem. It told me “Sorry, there are no results for ‘I want to write a poem’.”
I told it that I wanted to be happy. It told me I should insert word art and wrap text around pictures. I miss ‘Clip-it’; at least he smiled at me.
Linda Studley 