The Poetry Was There

Lines, lyrical lay in the gravel grinding
The sounds of a pilgrimage
Returning home, always homeward
When wheels roll round and find a spot to stop
The door swings open
Sweet poetry
Steps through the portal
A mother’s exhale, safely home
She writes a love poem on her heart
Aren’t the roads fraught
With danger, after all
Each homecoming calls for celebration
Explodes with hope
The kind the psalmists wrote

Verses vibrate in the Maytag’s roar
Viciously extricating soil and sand
From jeans that have seen toil
Walked the halls of schools
Where poetry has died.

And run the race from dawn to dusk
Of bringing home the bacon and
Taking out the trash
Running the good race
Throughout the state
And sat beside the fire’s dancing flames
Blue and orange
Eavesdroppers on the reparte
Evening exchange
Of monologue and dialogue and diatribe
Each one’s story to be heard
And poetry is there.

It was threaded loop on loop, in the reflection
On a dirty window pane
Of dancing branches
Doing  jitter bug and pirouette
The twist and turns like prima ballerina
Limb on limb
Held lines of rhyming poetry
Shadow and branch, a duet in the air
The leaf, the limb, the branch, the twig
Every move echoed in the light
Reflection on Mac’s screen
In the cold and frozen air
A single cardinal shivers in his
Coat so red
Poetry hung in the yard
Hauntingly recording winter
Like mockingbird remembers what he’s heard

It is always there
Quiet observer
Or participant

And when the pillows catch
The sleepy heads
As they land with heaviness

Seeking rest
The best is written
By the night
The walls may talk
In rhyme and tell
Of all they see
What happens
In the home

Is no less than
Beowulf
Hope is the thing with feathers
I know why the caged bird sings
Piano
And the rest

Yes, poetry was there
Inside the four walls
Verses preserve
Living moments
Alive
My life
My poetry
Is there.

Joining Tweetspeak Poetry and Glynn Young for Poetry At Work Day and a “Poetry At Work” Book Club

and Lyli for Thought Provoking Thursday