Fragile Resilience

 

Fragile Resilience
                    (for Jennie)

You stood for so long,
buffeted by a Wyoming wind,
no desire to be put out to pasture,
yet wounded in a way
that would wear down any soul.

Hearts and hands
extended by those who care
went unanswered,
independence your mantra
and your wounds now ours.

I’ve been away for the past week attending to family matters, but I should be back home by the end of the month. Meanwhile, I get to experience a Wyoming winter.

 

Driving with Miles

 

 

Driving with Miles

Rain falls, steady, and I say so what.
Wipers try in vain to keep the beat,
but this combo is too tight.
The bass just layin’ it down,
horn and sax sparring.

There’s a fog rolling through the hills,
tellin’ the rain
hold the ice, this is just too cool.

Bare branches, with pines the only green
in a landscape of white on brown.

Wait! A lone birch like a ghost that knows.
As blue as this feels,
there will be no blue sky.

And that so what refrain slips in
and out.

Narrow roads now,
winding through wet grass
lined with granite and marble.
A memorial among memorials,
some barely legible.
Everything here is blue,

except the pines, white now with big, heavy flakes.
Country roads skirt the mountains,
Snow, now powder, hangs in the air
like a fog. Roads slicker than the music.

Hands tense on the wheel.
Piano eases through me, slowly
levels out, brings me back to the lake,
out there somewhere,
blue asleep within the white.

 

 

This is from a reading at Spine Bookstore & Café, St Louis, MO (12 Mar 2023).

Driving with Miles is included in my poetry collection, Glass Awash, published by Spartan Press.

Shared with OpenLinkNight at dVerse ~ Poets Pub.

 

Mezza Luna ~ haibun

Mezza Luna

I roll down these dark roads beneath a moon that gives no quarter. Even its half-light provides a beacon that offers comfort to one who is headed home. Given time, it will shine even brighter. But I will be home by then, my heart content, and I’ll be able to share its brilliance.

bare branches
reach for glowing orb
in darkness

 

This is my response to Haibun Monday 2-27-23: Mezza Luna,
the prompt from Frank Tassone at dVerse ~ Poets Pub.

Mezza Luna is Italian for the moon’s quarter phase, or half-moon.

Image: Moon 58% full at 9:00pm, 27 February 2023

Nebulous ~ quadrille

Nebulous

No more, yet no less, sensitive
than those around her.
In tune with her emotions.
          A siren calls
from an interstellar cloud,
her song          familiar notes.
          Then and now.
Her voice          imploring,
          know this truth.
This star          my heart
is meant only for you.

This is my response to Quadrille #169: A Star (Poem) is Born,
the prompt from De Jackson at dVerse ~ Poets Pub,
which is to use a form of the word star in a Quadrille – a 44-word poem
(excluding title), with no required meter or rhyme.

Image source: Astronomy Picture of the Day ~ The Heart of the Rosette Nebula (© Lyman Insley)

 

61 West Superior ~ American sentence

61 West Superior

I was beside myself
when I first met you.
I am so to this day,
with you beside me.

And as an American sentence:

I was beside myself when we first met, and so I am to this day.

This is my response to Reena’s Xploration Challenge # 266, using one of the photos she provided.

Shared with OpenLink Night #331.

And this is where it all began (at the library of The Poetry Foundation, in Chicago):
How I Knew I Was a Poet

Photo by Alex Batonisashvili on Unsplash