My Silent House

 

My house is a quiet house,

Always various shades of silent—

Though Etta blows silky smoke throughout the rooms,

Though Nina tells me that I know how she feels,

Though Storm Large with Pink Martini might ask me to come sway with her,

And, at times, Freddy proclaims we are, indeed, champions,

While the evening news drones mundane atrocities of the world each day

And the dogs may bark, trying scare the workers across the street away—

My house is silent through it all, echoing noise in its quiet way,

An orderly, meandering contented existence does it hold.

Heaven?

Image courtesy of istock

Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge June 15, 2021 | Go Dog Go Café (godoggocafe.com)

 

Have I seen Heaven in her eyes?  You ask.

Can anyone see heaven in the eyes of another

Is what I must ask.

 

I have seen love, the soft one,

Take a seat and

Settle comfortably

In the eyes of others.

 

I have seen hatred, the snake,

Uncoil and dance,

Spitting venom at everything and everyone,

From the eyes of others.

 

Too often, I have seen death, the thief,

Steal all the treasures from the eyes

Of those I loved,

Leaving them hollow and emptied out.

 

I have seen other things

In the eyes of others

Along these long years

But heaven—

I don’t really think so.

 

I may be too old to see such a wonder

Or too young yet to know it

When I see it.

 

So, to answer,

I would have to say, no.

No, I have not seen

Heaven in her eyes.

 

The Rabbit

Image courtesy of Unsplash

https://amanpan.com/2021/06/10/eugis-weekly-prompt-nature-june-10-2021

When trying to respond to Eugenia’s prompt this week, this poem, which I posted a couple of years ago kept coming into my head, and no matter how I tried, it would not go away. In this reposting, it is my hope that it serves some purpose. Perhaps, someone will gather something from it.

 

A rabbit stilled,

Motionless, as if frozen

In the summer grass

 

Only her nose twitched, flared

The scent of wrongness–

A touch upon the air,

 

And she knew

Only flight carried safety

Flight, the right choice to make—

If she could only still move.

 

But she could stand only statue still

And standing so, the trap sprung

Steel teeth clamping down,

Slicing through skin,

Chewing through chunks of muscle

As she struggled,

Daring not to scream

As screams would bring the predators.

This she knew too well.

 

The trap now biting into bone,

Her struggles stopped.

Her panting calmed.

Her head rested upon the grass.

One eye looked to a cloudless sky.

She prayed for strength to chew

Through bone.

 

Morning

Image is my own

No words in the moment.

Just touch,

Feeling.

No adequate metaphors

To be found.

No fancy turns of phrases

To be made.

A breath.

Watch the sun rise.

No dance of words

To map the moment.

Simple really,

A heartbeat close.

A breath.

A touch.

A feeling.

A moment.

Captured.

 

 

 

 

Crescendo

Image is my own

https://sammiscribbles.wordpress.com/category/weekend-writing-prompt/

wk 212 crescendo
 

 

 

Crescendo, sun rise,

Swells an upsurge of color,

Fades too fast for me.

 

Ever loudening,

The business of the day trades

Scenes of memories.

 

Diminuendo comes,

An end, a small death of colors

As day slowly fades.

Washed

At the Beach – Image by KL Caley

https://new2writing.wordpress.com/2021/06/03/writephoto-beach/#like-5743

( An older poem written in 2015 while in Provincetown, MA.  Revised for this week’s writephoto challenge.)

At sunrise over water,

        Remembering as if in a dream  

The child and you and me

As we stood by a sea

Half a world away.

Both of you now baptized differently by my tears.

 

And for and from you,

I am left with things neither given

Nor felt in years,

 Linked by all the fears

To form over a decade of a life

Lived like a stranger

In my own shrinking 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

 

Dawn

Image courtesy of Pinterest

 

Clouds drift in night’s sky,

Stretching,

As if yearning,

To touch the horizon,

Dawn yet hours away–

She neither “walks in beauty

Like the night” as Byron wrote

Nor does she stand upon a scallop shell

Riding the sea foam to shore

As Botticelli painted—

     No, nothing so over done

Simply, she rises, flaming

Over the desert mountains.

Lingering

 

 

The silk of waking

To dreams yet dreamed

Linger in the sky

Adrift in gray clouds

Carrying visions of possibilities

That yet may be

All Things New

Image courtesy of Dreamtime

Storm clouds rode in

Upon a sky soaked in sunset red.

Wildflowers bowed their heads

Down on either side

As I drove by

Smiling, thinking of all things new.

Once home, I stood in the yard,

Arms akimbo, welcoming the new—

What the storm, the wind, the rains

Would bring—

As gently as their nature could—

All things new, clean, green

With spring.

Scars of Hope

Image is my own

I gather hardened scars of loss and damage
Braided into keloid beauty
That are not blossoms of bitterness,
But fragrant beauties
That make me who I am.
Even the bars of your barren garden
Called love could not steal away
The essence of my hope.
Instead, the black, barrenness
within sugar syrup words
Of one never able to love
Contain no acid
To eat away
My skin of hope.