Still Here

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Still Here

Cut grass, sweet and fragrant
Spring’s trademark
You could bottle the stuff, sell it
At Neiman Marcus
It punctuates my days
From sunup to sundown
Like the lady with the beehive on the elevator
Heavy handed with her perfume
In an effort to try hard, too hard
To cover her transgressions
Sweet smell of store bought grace

Smells like childhood and memory
Out there
Skint knees and day-light savings time
And those pint sized 747’s  go from here to there
You could set your clock by their work
Pollinating and cross-pollinating
So focused on their work
They produce guilt
In the poet
They, single-minded  and task oriented
The artist, wavering and wondering

And I am still here
Left in the wake of new beginnings
Wallflower, wondering
Why poetry dried up
A heart mining deep
Caught in transit are the words

I come to a ghost white page

Blinking cursor like an old school marm
Tapping her impatient brograns
Where are the words you claim you
Bought and paid for with your living

Where is the poetry
Saved up
On the floor of the mason jar
Like lightening bugs
Gasping for air

Still here
Polishing, pruning
Mining the story
And praying hard

The words don’t return to ash
And dust
For lack of air

Breathing deep
Still
And restless
Poet warrior
Her pen, her weapon

Seeking peace
And moving the sprinkler
To water the words

Celebrating
Poetry Month
In the still quiet
Of irony and longing

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Joining Laura Boggess for Playdates at The Wellspring

The Winter Of A Potential Malcontent

wpid-20140212_145037.jpgFor a long and frozen moment
Moments of dark and cold fall over us
Weapons of malcontent
I might have known
War zone trauma
Traumatized by Pax
So close to peace, its wretched name
Trees break, grunt, moan
Fall from the sky, war wounded
Like bombs extinguishing
Life from the day
Exploding
Last week’s tulips bow in mourning
My shoulders
Rise to my ears in fear
A mortar of pine and oak, ice and pine
Will land on this
World of mine
Repetition of a death march
Battle weary are we

The talking head said
To fight cabin fever
Stay hydrated, move,
Stimulate your mind
All creativity is drying up
Going up in smoke with the fire
That is now our world, hovering round
The hearth of the home
2014 reeks of 1814

No power no water
No light
Disconnection sets in
Dirty and cold

The piano, frozen
As am I
Spoiled by Pandora and Spotify
Times like this we wish
We could remember to play
Ebony and ivory

The winter will not be a victor
I refuse to bow down and give in
Lonely and cold
Dark and restlessness
Quiet and routine bully my soul
My white flag, were I to raise it
Would not be seen

We are adrift in a sea of white
And grays color the soul

Though I know Spring, like the tide will rise
And the sun will burn
Ice will melt
And yes
We will dance and feast, warm our souls
On the heat of the earth
The tyranny of the urgent is ruling the day
Heavy handed and cruel
I will not lie down in defeat

For these are the days
The right here times
When the battle is on
And in full swing
I armor up with
Flashlight in hand
And the words
Always
Words will shift the balance of power
Ravenous and hungry
I devour her words.

At first I sat with “Booked”
In my hands
Propped in the threshold of the front door
Squeezing the light out of the day
As the earth stood nearly still
When an early visitor came to call
Nightfall
And darkness
And I like a child rolled up in a ball
Fought hard against tears
Formed from the  words
As they lept from the page

I battle-scarred

Seeking solace
I remain
Held captive, nearly numb
Frozen in place

Now thawed by Prior
And her words
Held
In a warm embrace
Safe from Pax, seeking
Peace
Inside the pages

Of “Booked”

Sunday Poetry – Through My Lens In Prose

If you are here every now and then, or have ever visited my space  here, or perhaps read my page with a bio. Back  when I had a page with a bio, and not an underconstruction about the writer or  author page, well you’d know the ratio of poetry to prose. ( I have an aversion to bios and struggle to write them.)

For a longish while the ratio has been heavy on  poetry.

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But I find that I  am moving into a period of prose.

Did you leave? Or did you return? I find that humor helps calm the beating heart. And  helps to hold back the flood of tears. Because I come writing today with an overflowing heart. One filled with raw emotion. Maybe even writing about poetry makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. That is different, right, from writing poetry. Right?

Sundays always seem filled with poetry. Maybe it is there Monday through Saturday but the eyes can’t see. Or maybe the holiness of Sunday causes the soul to feel ever single poetic thing. Maybe Sunday created by Creator God to be an eyes wide open to beauty day.

I just know that  yesterday there was an abundance in every turn and fold, step and dash. And I think hard these days of why poetry. For me. In my life. Why is there a passion in me to write it and find it. To unearth it and not miss it. To seek it out and name all that seems poetic in my days.

Because there are those days I truly wonder why. Wrestle hard. Question long. Think deep. And they are more frequent, raising  their heads and shining light, looking for an answer.My wandering and weird journey to poetry continues in tandem with a questioning spirit. Why  do I  feel fire in my belly to write it and explore the poetry of everything. It would be rhetorical to ask, so for now I am living into the call to write and earnestly hope that my art blesses.

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There was poetry for the uncovering everywhere in my yesterday. And while some I captured with my camera lens, some I simply cupped my hands and caught there in the moment, drinking from the vessel of the day. When I see how alive poetry causes me to be, I question less the draw to it. For if God unveiled poetry as a gift for my receiving, then I say thank you, truly and turn it back, release it out and beyond myself.

I can question and create in the same breath. He makes room for both. This is the Grace shown to the artist. And in the revealing of each small beautiful poetic offering in my days, I feel more like one who is undeserving. So much beauty and nuance. Lilting and singing. Swaying and flowing. Wooing and whispering. Calling to come see. To taste. And savor.

In life’s poetry.

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Each verse of scripture read by our Vicar carried me off and out of church on the wings of words. Yesterday. Lost in the lines of the living Word.

Browns and creams, smoothed by years of refining salt and sand, held my gaze for minutes and more. And I simply was stuck in a beauty pause carried in from the sea. Gifts my husband brought home. Porcelain-like. Perfect. Deposits from wave on wave of glory. Now sitting in my home. A reminder of love and beauty.

At dusk, the dolphin danced on the calm waters of Jeremy Creek and I was there in the moment. Because I answered the whisper to go stand by the water at the just right time.  Dipping up, breaking the water, his stage. And I on the banks alone. Breathing in poetry.

I rested my head on my husbands shoulder, smelling the salt the aroma of him whom I love. And  lost my breath. He had captured with his own lens, the swan preening, like a marble sculpture, frozen in time. And the mink stuck in the crab trap. But oh the story of its release told in his soothing voice. And the Oyster Catcher. The oysters and the sea.

And as I tell, I tell myself. It is a gift.

This life. This poetry.

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On Mondays I love to join my friend Laura Boggess. I am there today with other writers. Come visit?

Maple Syrup On Sunday

Maple Syrup On Sunday

Quiet lulls like soul food, soulful
Margins widen
Again
After the long lonesome loud
Period.
Sometimes you have to call it like it is
Or was
My soul was drowning in noise
Of churning, change
Learning, living, out loud
Speeding Road Runner and Wylie-like
Braking at the last minute
At  the edges of the cliffs
And not the white ones of Dover
Pastoral and pure
More like
The ragged jagged ones
Barrel rolling over the
Falls
Nearly, but bailing out right before rolling over the
Niagara white foamy frothing falls with fierce
Break-neck speed
Like the Tasmanian Devil swirling twirling
I don’t buy that Devil in the Details
Stuff, not one bit
But in the racing like
Nascar through life
Yep
He may crouching tiger
Lay there ready to pounce

But mercifully
Peace seeps in, creeps in
Like maple syrup drips out of a tapped tree
Blanketing a stack of white and fluffy
Flap jacks with sugary sweet
Jesus peace like a river
Re-attends

And life is wondriful
A hybrid blend of glorious wonderful
Again

When Oliver wrote those words about joy and crumbs
I get it, really get it
And if joy were a condiment
It should be maple syrup on Sunday
Poured out slow and steady
So thick and sticky
You couldn’t wash it off if you tried
It wants to linger in the air
On fingers
Counters
Somehow leaving traces of itself everywhere
Creating stagnant pools
In cracks and crevices
Of joy
Sweet like maple syrup on a slow motion morning
Quiet lulls like soul food, soulful
Margins widen
Again

And poetry
Is born again.
pink beach sadie