It is the official release day! I’m honored and grateful that my friend, Candice Louisa Daquin, “gently” nudged me to do this. Additionally, I am indebted to Candice for believing in me and for her diligent work in editing. Thank you, Candice. You are one of the most giving people I know. I want to thank Tara Caribou of Raw Earth Ink who has been patient with this novice at every step in the publishing process.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Susi Bocks, Ivor Steven, and M. Brazfield who were willing to provide advance reviews on short notice. Thank you so much.
Feast not too often on meager crumbs of joy,
fallen haphazardly from someone else’s table.
Thinking yourself filled, sated,
you will find yourself crouching, smiling,
lowering your head to be patted by the hand
that cares nothing for you.
Then, when beaten back from the table,
you will scuttle away crouching low,
spirit yielding to fear.
But rise, rise then, standing—
staring eye to eye.
Lift your head and turn,
walk to new horizons.
There, build a table all your own
where you feast wholeheartedly
upon the delightful dishes of joy
you create,
inviting others to share.
Each one partaking in as much joy
as can be held
at your table
where no one
need feast on crumbs.
I envy the monarch’s, the hummingbird’s arc of return, infinite, eternal. My jealousy consumes as I have no return, no cycle— Only the damnation of this linear thing, finite, directionless.
Each new year brings
Now this garden grief
Nourished by regret
Each year, this day, here—
Standing, kneeling, sitting—I
Spend tears, words, wishes
All meaningless now,
In the barren garden grief
Flowers never bloom
Seven years gone now--
Nothing roots, though it has tried,
In the garden grief inside
Originally written for Sammi Scribbles Weekend Writing Challenge- Using Question in exactly 84 words but I didn’t get back to edit it down until today.
Questions hang in the air
Like heavy coastal fog
On cool autumn mornings
Eternal questions of humanity:
All the whys, the wonderings--
Never answered prayers--
Laying pressed between the
Pages of a book like brown,
Dried flowers—forgotten,
Having lost their sentiment.
Speak the differences
Among roses, weeds, wildflowers—
Inconsequential answers
For inconsequential questions.
Could sense of counting
Out the hours be sliced
Like blood, blooming meat
To find truth absolute
Like high priestesses of old,
Scry the answer
In a blood filled bowl?
With ramshackle shards
Of heart, soul, self
Falling away like the browned petals
Of a long-wilted bouquet,
We create a riotous noise
In ramshackle attempts
To find some connection.
Lumbering, awkward attempts
At reaching out to touch once again,
To replace, to freshen
The brown wilted and missing parts
With new bouquets of spring
Whose stems sit in eternally
Fresh, clean waters.
We dream of a life lived
No longer ramshackle,
With no long-wilted bouquets
Of a past to haunt with falling petals,
But a life returning whole,
To move without noise
Through the world once again.
I am unsure how this happened,
but the stone grew, encasing me,
protective and cold, a walking grave
of comfort for many years.
Now, having grown moss over
the passing of so many seasons and
used to the weight of stone I carry
into the calm of night,
blossoms burst forth from this tonnage
of comforting cold stone,
this grave of a home I have known.
I would like to twist,
turn away from
such blossoms,
yet find I cannot.
I cannot gather dust to me,
creating stone again.
Cannot piece shards together
for there are not enough left
in this remaining dust.
As I rest in this place,
I will tuck these blooms away--
Until they bear ripened fruit,
Readied for picking.
Fragrant blossoms
that they may only be
for now.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 