In breaking silence,
earth and sky kiss again.
At a toast of mid-day,
the moon shows her face,
a smile of grace.
In the glimmer of a star’s dance,
a thorn on dried roses prick,
a reminder of circumstance.
Every Rose
Category: Solitude
Where the Heart Is
Written in response to https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/2020/05/09/weekend-writing-prompt-156-home/
Isn’t home where the heart is?
Or where you hang your hat?
My heart, well, I don’t know.
I seem to have misplaced it
Somewhere along the way.
I think I just mistreated it
And it decided to run away.
Didn’t treat it tenderly–
Let it get bruised,
Broken, bashed about.
So, it up and decided
It was time to go.
It bought a one-way ticket
On a now defunct airline
And went to catch the sun
On some tropical beach.
But that’s what happens
When you carelessly
Fling your heart around.
It develops shadows,
Misses beats,
Valves leak.
Then it gets pissed off,
runs away,
and home isn’t
what it
used to be.
Catacomb of Colors
I can hide in catacombs of colors and never look to the sky.
My blood shed, bled out in tiny droplets of all the years of parting,
dripping, draining in the darkness
And carried away, scattered to the winds,
Leavings upon the ground, seedless seeds,
Sprouting up in colorless flowers of summer without colors,
Without the dreams of sunlight on their faces,
Without fragrance sweet, divinity in scents we can never forget lost.
We learn to live with regrets taken, earned, packed away
With the mortgage of things within our hearts, within our lifetimes of meaning,
Within our trying just one more damn time,
Drifting up in clouds of long-ago cigarette smoke.
Crush this dried out husk of me,
Scatter those particles of dust to the wind
And see if colors sprout once that dust settles upon the ground,
See if there’s meaning left within their regrets,
See if there’s fragrance, some elegance of divinity within a scent
To be remembered when there is nothing,
Nothing left but this wisp of memory
Within your breath.
Let go my hand, love. Leave me wrapped in the shroud
Of all my days and regrets shared along the way
To here, this time of parting. Leave me to hide away
In this catacomb of colors.
Horrid Spring
Wind and rain
Of this horrid spring
Whips us to perfection
Of brokenness being
Beaten souls
That we are
In this time of need
And want of touch.
Our loneness sheltered
Bodies, our silence shattered souls,
Contoured colors of minds
Restrained our madness
In this once upon a time.
If only to wake in the warmth
Of human skin upon skin
Once again in some perfumed swirl
Contained in believing a speck of faith
Preserved as a fly in amber.
That fly who found rest
In warm liquid ooze
But was never to escape.
Yes, grateful to escape to
This fitful rest though, yes,
It is, indeed, blessed.
My mind scatters,
Struggles to find a train of thought
To ride in peace from one station
To the next, make a trip to the elegance
Of a dining car, white glove service
And all else– in contrast—
To this vast emptiness—
With which to wrestle like Jacob,
But my soul has long been crippled.
All the trains left the station,
Ran circles around my heart,
Chugging on into the tunnels
To find there isn’t much
In expectation on the other side
Of those darkened tunnels.
No light, no light,
Just a cold grey
Of a horrid spring.
The Friction of Salt
Image from Shutterstock
Pieces of her broke in the waves,
Searching for wildness
In this place she always went to be alone.
She walked along this shore a thousand times
In the dawn and the dusk
As if they were quantities unknown,
And thus, in them, she could discover some truth,
Some faith, some charity, some hope for herself.
Who knew? It had worked before.
She’d walk toward the town with something—
Some small bit piece replenished.
Besides–
She’d always heard salt was healing,
So she figured she’d rub it in her wounds.
But bloody red and raw
She walks still wounded, broken,
Along the wildness,
Yet not touching it.
Freedom elusive.
She can not find what she lost.
Her wounds chains,
Binding her still
To things she knew illusions.
She waits for the friction of salt
To rub away the chains.
She walks toward the seals in the surf
And on toward the whales in the deep,
Searching for truth or faith or charity
In the wildness of the sea.
Washed
At sunrise over water,
Remembering a dream
Of finding ecstasy
Within tears,
Things neither given
Nor felt in years,
Linked by all the fears
To form decades of a life
Lived like a stranger
In my own skin.
I have stood
Since the dawn
At this ocean’s edge
Waiting, waiting.
And now at noon
The rain begins.
Fierce pelting blows
Washing me clean
Of all I know
Or dare to dream.
For living continues
Within my own skin
Winter
Blurred edges of a winter morning
A dawn leached of color
Where silence and stillness walk
Holding hands
A moment captured waking
Lasts
As warmth fades
And coldness settles in
To stay.
Cleaning
To clean a heart and soul,
the way we clean a house:
scrub away
the grime and grease,
bleach away
the mold and mildew,
polish away
the dusty dullness,
vacuum away
dirt and dust
and leaves and grass
tracked in on muddy
dog paws,
who then shake wet fur
all over the floor,
yes, even vacuum away
all the hair shed upon the floor
by dogs and you,
then mop away
dried dirt,
straightening and organizing
as you go.
Then rest,
enjoying the gleam and shine
before opening the door
to visitors once more.
Yes, if only a soul
Could be cleaned
So very easily.
Truth
What truth is there but this?
Contained within the sand, wind,
An inky blue sapphire sea
Watching whales and seals play
As they sing their songs of joy
I listen
Their language so foreign to me
A vocabulary of rejoicing
In all that God has made
I can neither interpret nor define
Within this human construct
That it seems God forgot
Yet I seek to know
What they say
Of love
Of grief
Of play
Of joy
Saw Dust
Excuse me, please
While I sweep these words
From the floor like the saw dust they are
And toss them to the wind
To scatter in their ineffectiveness.
For nothing can be made
From such dust as this
No table, no chair
No house,
No tower, no bridge
They have no substance
To support any weight
Let them drift on the winds,
Return to earth as if sifted through,
Inconsequential as they are
Hidden in some tall, overgrown weeds
Somewhere out of sight
To rot in some organic way
Providing nutrients for soil.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 