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.
( 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
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.
The silk of waking
To dreams yet dreamed
Linger in the sky
Adrift in gray clouds
Carrying visions of possibilities
That yet may be
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.
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.
High in the air,
Buffeted by the strong winds,
Yet navigating the narrow beam
With a grace and strength of Baryshnikov
Or the great Nureyev
As I, his audience awed by his performance,
Stood and watched,
Wondering if everyone who looked
Could see this man’s artful grace
As he seemed to defy all laws of gravity,
Bending to hammer,
Leaping to rise,
Prancing to walk.
Then bending once again,
Hammering, rising, walking.
Never thrown off balance
By the winds or heavy hammer
Or the weighty leather tool belt,
Carrying the long nails off to the side.
Who else saw the grace and strength
In the rhythm of the dance
This man did perform
In the building of that house—
A dance that held something,
Some paternal element of David
As he danced entering Jerusalem—
How many would see the beauty in the performance of his work?
How many would only see a Hispanic male and question his legal status?
Restless roses
climb skyward
toward the eternal
their grace defeated
as winds thrust
them downward
toward dirt
they escape.
A phoenix rises in flames
From out the left side of my chest
With feathers of flame yet,
Set free to fly where it wills.
One day, it will return,
Nuzzling deep inside my chest again,
All the ashes gone,
All flame having died away,
Its fiery colored feathers
Whispering, singing to my blood
Of beauty seen,
Of tantalizing things touched,
Of all the air breathed, smelled, felt,
Of the sounds soft and harsh heard
All along the way around the earth.
Through the whispered tales
Of those fiery feathers
My blood will tell me
Where I am to go.
I clipped away dead branches
From the living shrubs today.
Not an easy thing,
But a thing that must be done.
Strange it is how dead things
Will cling so tightly to the living
As if to squeeze
The last remaining bits of life away
And thus, have company in death and dying.
There is yet more to do
So only the living things are left
To flourish in the spring sun.
Dedicated to A.
Writer, Tutor and Editor
undone in spectacle
An Imaginative Life with MS
Now without semikhah!
Because Sound Bytes Are Stupid
Bring On The Wonder
A Journey of Spiritual Significance
Spit mixed with dirt - Muddy words flow
~ Communicator, WordSmith, Artist, Guide, Mentor, Muse ~
Where writers gather
Atmospheric Mind Flow
Driveling twaddle by an old flapdoodle.
stories, poems and more
Poets lie all the time but there are some truths only poetry can tell.
Writing My Way Through Every Obstacle
Now we see through a glass, darkly
The Writer
Just a small town girl who writes about Christian stuff.
Musings on life, love, and healing past trauma
Sharing Poetry and Hugs
Poems, Ramblings and Photography
KL CALEY
Inspiration and Spirituality **Award Free**
Growing with gratitude for life's challenges
A dose of fetish. Good friends. An incomparable muse.
These are my inner thoughts, passions and inspirations.
An insight to a heart mind and soul.
An onion has many layers. So have I!
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
Alternative haven for the Daily Post's mourners!
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 6,000,000 visitors since 2014 and over 9,000 archived posts.
Echoes of Life, Love and Laughter
Poetry
Showcasing the best of short films and screenplays from the LGBTQ+ community. Screenplay Winner every single month performed by professional actors. Film Festival occurs 21 times a year!
A Discovery of Enlightening Insights, Information, Humor, Writings and Musings
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet and author by accident.
Premium Poetry Page Peskily Pondered Profoundly
Doing the best I can to keep it on the bright side
An Old Plumber, An Ex-Carer, An Amateur Poet, Words From The Heart
A storyteller with a poetic heart
...poetry, stories & rants.
Poetry by Devon Brock
by Lize Bard
