Small Matters

 

When the world weighs too heavily
On your shoulders you always seek
Water and sky and barely-there sun.

Ocean is best, lake is good.
Pond or stream are okay too.
Later, photos will suffice.

It’s reflection you’re after:
The light’s still there. After all.

 

---

 

(Written for dVerse’s sun quadrille prompt)

On Devotion

She was the kind of girl you never forget,
charisma so thick that when she laughed
every person present slid a breath or two closer,
seeking her warmth, needing the flicker of her
notice to kiss their brows like a blessing from
some medieval saint whose love bled out
all garish and hungry for the adoration of the
rightful multitude of supplicants at her hem.
You were caught in her undertow too, one more
postulant mouse who won the crowd’s attention
only now and then when she glanced your way,
and so of course their eyes followed. Hi there.
You saw her cruelty but adored her, even so.
Only later did you realize why – the gift of her gaze
was your own worth affirmed. You saw others
fall from favor but were sure that you were safe.
It’s no wonder that her leaving scraped you hollow.

It took years for you to mend yourself.
You’ll never forgive her for that.

Summation

Aiming to meet this
Hard world with steadfast kindness,
Sometimes she managed.

 

-~-~-~-~

For Poetry Asides April PAD Challenge (prompt: self-portrait poem)

Nighttime, Trying to Write

Suspend your skepticism, she whispered,
and you’ll find your greatest power comes
From the blurring, the unknowing, and then
The swing-and-a-miss of the first words
Scrawled across the white expanse of page.
They can’t all be diamonds. Not every waterfall
Breeds rainbows. But even the most petulant
Of muses will come calling every now and then.
When the barrier between the writer and
The written thins – that’s when you know that
You are really getting close.

 

-~-~-~-~

 

For The Sunday Whirl (prompt words: suspend, power, swing, diamond, waterfal, barrier – only managed six of the words this time – ah, well.)

Writer’s Child

Mama’s seeing with
her other eyes again,
the girl sang as she spun

once, twice, three times
then caught my near
hand in hers, laughing.

At the question in
My eyes, she shook
An imperious finger –

Mama’s looking at that
Other place where
All the words are born.

When they’re new
They’re awfully shy
So we must not disturb her.

 

-~-~-~-~

 

For Quickly’s Alt 5 (prompt: write without using and, of, with or -ed)

Since You Were Born

I’ll release you
Into someone’s waiting arms but
Can’t stop swaying

-~-~-~-~

I know 3:00
Better now than I ever
Would have dreamed

-~-~-~-~

You ferret out
Every small object we’ve mislaid
And mouth it

-~-~-~-~

Who’d have thought
I’d come to miss your
Newborn wail: uh-LAH!

-~-~-~-~

I know when
You’ve smiled just by watching
Your father’s eyes

-~-~-~-~

No bad mood
Proves hardy enough to withstand
kissing those cheeks

-~-~-~-~

Now I realize
My birthday really belongs to
My mom instead

-~-~-~-~

First shock subsiding
You suck the lime greedily
Then grab another

-~-~-~-~

You’ve changed me:
I’m more easily wounded by
This broken world

-~-~-~-~

The first time
You played alone I thought
Well, now what?

-~-~-~-~

For Napowrimo Day 4 (prompt: write a lune) and the Poetic Asides April PAD Challenge (prompt: Since ____)

A Visitation

The day you learned that ghosts were real
You saw the specter of yourself at fifteen
Shrouding a girl you didn’t recognize
But who wore the same drab jacket paired with
The same slightly out of fashion hair bow that
You felt so pretty wearing that year.

Your shoulders tightened with hers
In an unintentional act of self-protection,
Contradicting the overeager smile of yours
That lingered forgotten on her lips as she nattered
With calculated breeziness with friends just a bit
Too cool for her to risk relaxing into herself.

Lest the apparition should witness your
Decades-buried flush reborn, you fled.

 

-~-~-~-~

 

For dVerse (prompt: convey an emotion without naming it) and We Write Poems (prompt: history)

The Lap Cat’s Lament

Toppled from his throne by a vile, hairless new animal,
He pings around the edges of the reconstituted nucleus.
But each time he sidles near, seeking an available lap,
He finds himself rebuffed – there is no vacancy.
Growing gaunt with hunger for affection, he waits
For the interloper’s stranglehold on his family’s attention
To begin to decay: someday, he is sure,
They will love him again.

-~-~-~-~

For Three Word Wednesday (prompt words: gaunt, decompose, vile) and dVerse (prompt: animal poem).

On Mothering

Oh grief, don’t touch my child just yet.
Don’t teach him so soon that
Each beginning hides an ending.

Today I held a cup of water to his lips
And smiled with him as he sipped.
Yesterday he only sputtered.

He hasn’t noticed yet that joy
Is almost always seasoned with
A sprig or two of sadness.

So heartache, do me this kindness –
I will stand a while as surrogate.
Let me dance with you in his stead,

Mourning for him all the little deaths
That bob wistfully in the wake of
Every glad discovery.

 

-~-~-~-~

 

For Napowrimo Day 1, marking my return to writing after too long away. Prompt: Writers Asides PAD Challenge: write a beginning poem, or an ending poem.

On Becoming

I fear I haven’t learned the art of mothering yet,
have gathered no great pearls of wisdom to spill out
as gifts for your arrival. I’ve penned no lofty charge
to give you that could carry you bright-eyed and blameless
through the world that knocks, even now, impatient
on the walls of your hermitage. But I can tell you this:
beware the urge to answer its call in haste, my love.
Steep yet a while, safe beneath my heart – the world
will wait for you to knit cell to cell, build bone and tooth
and all the sticky filaments and sinews that bloom beneath
skin still translucent as the finest linen weave.
When it’s time to seek the air, you’ll know.

-~-~-~-~

For dVerse Open Link Night

And The Sunday Whirl (prompt words: art, bone, pearls, filaments, sticky, call, skin, air, linen, charge, beware, cell, knocks)