Category: Poetry

Lord Have Mercy – The Commingling of Joy and Grief

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

 

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Lord Have Mercy  – The Commingling of Grief and Joy

Full, bloated with beauty. A half a century plus eight years of looking up, I wonder again how the crevices, shadows, and craters, and chunks— wholly, holy cheese (a poet’s words not an astronomer’s terms)— are visible from Earth. I wondered how it seemed to have swallowed up all the light. Every glint and glimmer of the sun’s beams, transformed them into moon beams. In that blink.

The one between the set and rise, the pas deux of earth and sky.

Physicists and psalmists and poets and God knows on this one thing we can surely agree. We’ve never stop looking up at the blinding moon, man or no man.

Achingly we hold on to all it sends our way.

Night on night, the singleness of its trajectory appears to be aimed right at my broken heart.

This journey through my window pane, via crossbars in the crosshairs on a violent night here on Mother Earth. Full bloated with pain.

The explanation was Google-able. But I needed only magic and mystery. No explanation would console me, no explanation for the orb’s blinding grace would soothe me into understanding.

Radiant beauty that blinded me the night the evil rained down in Vegas was bound for Earth, a long forever, ago. And will be forever more.

Two unexplainable facts. Beauty, moving me to tears. One eye cried tears from the beautiful. One eye cried from the pain.

Lord have mercy on the ones. Whose soul windows are bloated with commingled saline tears. Blessed are the ones whose cheeks were tear stained.

The night the bullets rained down in Vegas, Lord have mercy on that night.

That night the moon refused to refuse to shine.

My eyes, my spirit, that night, as blue as a pair of full blue moons. Every once in awhile the tears run rapid down the cheeks, a race to the finish line.

The point where grief heals all wounds, mends all things, bears all things. Love.

And still.

The world is bloated.

With beauty.

Come Sit Beside Me, Please

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 5 Comments

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Come Sit Beside Me, Please

We all need a call to wake up
To attend to right now, right here
With a quorum of the senses reporting for duty
To cast their vote, for slow

Not like we need food and shelter and all the things in Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs
But, like we need poets and psalmists and prophets and spring
And two thin slices of white bread, to be soft enough to hold a thumbprint soft
So that when thick cut bologna bound with red wrapper and Dukes mayonnaise conjoin to Be pressed forward on the roof of one’s mouth, it’ll stick, (serving its white bread pre-Destined purpose of being bookends for meat) later requiring manual unsticking
And requiring two Diet Cokes to wash down the chips that served as a side in lieu of fresh Fruit at the deli counter  at the Harris Teeter which serves Boar’s Head beef bologna and The best salt and vinegar chips anywhere served politely by the shy but friendly silver Haired lady with the hair net that she wears with pride because she cares to follow the Rules and she cares too

Like we need a young man on a plane to remind us that twenty two year old adventurers
Have not had time to grow old and cold and jaded like the sad stooped man in 19B
Who doesn’t remember what time zone he is in or what his anniversary is or was before She left him for someone who remembered every year with a Hallmark card and a night Out on the town in her church dress and hose

But rather like we need rust on tin to prove there was a time of new and green
And how we live for low tide to find the rare left-handed conch brought in by the Preceding high tide, deliverer of treasures needing a hand to carry them home

And like we need a toe headed toddler who pats the sofa
With his sausage fat fingers and a nose that needs Kleenex
A diaper that weighs heavy with the need for changing
A pat, pat, pat
Slow as a metronome slow on the far left setting
And says “Read me ‘Good Night Moon’ again”
And only you know,
But don’t care that it’s the 23rd time, since Christmas
As he adds, “come sit beside me, please”

And you do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Blackbird Stole My Poetry And Other Lame Excuses

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

The Blackbird Stole My Poetry And Other Lame Excuses

I dreamed once in a daydream, not resting under indigo back-lit sky.The scarlet winged blackbird came to visit me. An awakening. Unwelcome.Unannounced. The visit was a robbery of unfinished words, my art.

Every poem left abandoned, in embryonic stages, wet ink pen lying in repose, by the paper’s side, was carried off  by my feathered enemy. Fowl dressed in red and black. Colors of his uniform for war. And I, my own worst enemy.

I cannot blame him. For abandoned art remains fair game.

I cannot hold him to account. He saw that I was sleeping, not attending to my work.

But I must thank him, properly. For while he could have released them, into a angry wind. He chose instead to drop them off for me to start again.

The shreds of paper would have served him to line his feathery nest. But instead they floated back to earth in billowing down-currents and landed by my right side.

The blackbird gives a second chance. Waking me from sleep. In gratitude I offered him a seat. We’re here now beak to cheek sitting in soft repose. At my windowsill. He no longer dressed  for war, but in tones of of papal royalty. Restorer of the second chance.

I dreamed once in a daydream. I found again lost poetry.