Category: Poetry

“I…
      I’m going…”

“I’m going to the dentist
      I…
          I have to go now”

With that, she turned away and walked down the hall

Six years old
A book bag as big as she was
Eyes peeking out between a fringe of bangs 

and a disposable mask
It’s February, 2021
It’s almost been a year

For the life of me
I don’t have a clue who she was
and she didn’t know me

But in that random meeting 
there in an elementary school hallway 
we needed a connection

She needed to tell me about herself
and I needed to hear it

Yet
Less than a minute earlier
I didn’t even know

I think about Alice sometimes
when I drop into the hole
in the palm of my hand

She fell past books on shelves
past cupboards with closed doors
and maps and pictures on pegs

I fall past people and ideas
past the odd author or two
a poet, a teacher, and the news of my world

Alice landed with a thump
and sometimes I do, too
bruised and almost broken

And more often than not 
like hers
my marmalade jar is empty

Movement ahead brings my eyes up 
from the stone-strewn path that 
demands my attention 

A red-bellied woodpecker 
moves quickly from tree to tree ahead of me 
flashing grey and red with frenetic bursts of flight

“Flit” is the word, isn’t it, for what I’m seeing?  

That’s always struck me as a written word — 
have I ever heard it said it aloud?  
I’ll do that, I decide, and twice declare it to the trees  

With the bird out of site, I drop my head and
start off once more, not quite flitting 
but with a step clearly lighter than before

We stand on the side of a hill
a beech tree and I, as the 
cold January wind blows between us
rustling its lingering foliage and stirring my thinning hair

Its leaves are bleached brown and brittle, that beech
devoid of the green that gave life in the summer sun
They hang on because of the tree’s inability 
to let go of what it does not need anymore

Marcescence, the trait is called
I linger a moment, thinking on that
then turn and walk down my winding trail
holding tightly to a few things of my own

The trolls of my childhood

lurked under bridges 
waiting for the perfect goat

or sat deep in the mountains
feeling lucky about the errant dwarf

Today’s hide behind a screen name
waiting for the next tweet to pounce upon
just for the sad pleasure of doing so

Trolls never have had much of a life

---

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found on Laura Shovan’s site here: Laura Shovan

I stepped outside this morning and was overwhelmed 
by the beauty of the new day

Despite the turmoil of my human heart and mind
the world rolls on and on 

The sun is rising higher above the horizon 
and the shadows are growing shorter  

The trees are showing buds 
in anticipation of leafing in the next few months

The air is crisp and clear
absent the wind and clouds of yesterday

The birds go about their business of singing and surviving
their minds untouched

by those things I allow to touch mine 

---

Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things” drifts in and out of my mind
As I walk the woods of north Alabama on a crisp Sunday afternoon

Like the poet, I, too, experience the grip of despair some days
Despair and fear

Unlike Berry, though, I do not lie by the water of the drake and the heron
Rather, I walk a path among the pines, the oaks, and the hickories

There is a stillness here, known by the face of the limestone above me
A face that has borne witness to millenia upon millenia in silence

In that place, I know peace as the cool wind moves around me
In that place, I know the Grace of Creation, and find my rest

Today I was struck with a line  
Probably from 
a long-forgotten book or movie
I don’t remember the characters and
I don’t remember the setting

But I remember him or her saying
to him or her
“If you leave, I’m afraid you won’t come back
and if you do
I’m afraid I won’t know you as I once did”

That came to me as I was walking the empty halls at school 

No students
They are believed to be at home
Safe 
It is hoped

No teachers
They are known to be behind their classroom doors
Locked away from the intruder
This is no drill

I am afraid

I am afraid
What I knew won’t come back
and if it does
I won’t know it as I once did