Author: lillian

I am the Sins of Those Before Me

lillian45 Comments

They arrived in droves, valuable cargo.
Used for the well being of others
to plant and sow, shod our horses,
tend our fields and homes.

In their visibility they were anonymous.
They were bid upon and owned.
Free will shackled in irons,
inhumanity by humanity.

This is our history. Not sepia toned
nor romantically blurred by antiquity.
Not smudged as charcoal blends,
disappears into fine threads of vellum.

This is our history,
and I am ashamed.

Posted to dVerse where Bjorn is hosting OLN; opens at 3 PM Boston time.
No photo posted with this poem. Racism still lives and appears on nightly news. I crave the dream of Martin Luther King and pray for all our children, for a better, kinder, more just world.

 

Misplaced Egos

lillian43 Comments

The peacock struts slowly.
Picks up one foot
and then the other
as oglers crouch,
cameras and smart phones in hand,
waiting.

People peer through apertures,
fingers tensed to catch the shot.
And still the bird struts.
Guards its fan of iridescent blues and greens,
that myriad of non-iris eyes,
its feathered gloriosity.

The peacock stands proudly still
waiting for the peahen to appear,
not giving a whit for humanity.
Those gullible money-paying creatures
who think their presence
could be a reason for its preening.

stockvault-peacock122020

Today, Victoria is hosting dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, and asks us to consider feathers in our poems.  I’ve stood waiting, at zoos and nature parks across the U.S. and in Bermuda, waiting for a peacock to spread its glorious fan and have never, ever, seen it! Facts: the peacock is the male of the species and spreads its fan in a mating “dance/call” for the female. Only the males are peacocks. Females are peahens and quite dull colored. Peacock feathers in fan-form, emit a sound only heard by peahens. Peacocks can and do fly. And, perhaps the most fun fact: a group of peacocks is called an ostentation or a party. Photo Credit: Danny Ouellet.

In the Balance

lillian56 Comments

For six minutes you belonged to eternity. Then paddles upon your chest. Twice.
You were here but not here. A stainless steel and glassed in room with whirrs, beeps, and methodical suction sounds. Your body, cold and dormant, in transition. A shell suspended in time that encased your soul, your mind. You were somewhere in a season unknown to us. We waited. We prayed for your voice and love and laugh to break through and survive.

chrysalis hangs by thread
holds life in transition within its seams
to be or not to be

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Photo Credit: Alfonso Diaz

It’s haibun Monday at dVerse and our beloved Toni reminds us that in Japanese culture, the aesthetic is all about change – impermanence. “Mujo. Our lives are not the same as yesterday nor will they be the same tomorrow.” Haibun: prose (not fiction) followed by a nature-related haiku. dVerse opens today at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!
Toni will be taking a hiatus from dVerse until November. We shall miss her dearly.
October 15, 2013: the love of my life broke through and returned to us. Thankful for every day.

 

Two Clerihews

lillian49 Comments

** A clerihew is a comical biographic verse. See full explanation below photos.

i.
All the ladies admired the young Houdini,
but wished he performed in a thong bikini.
Their screams take it off created a racket
as he hung upside down in a confining strait jacket.

ii.
Rip Van Winkle slept away the years,
escaped his wife’s nagging and too-often tears.
Thought he’d be a ladie’s man, a new phenomenon,
instead he limped beside the dames, testosterone gone.

Written for dVerse, a poet’s pub, where today Gayle asks us to write a Clerihew: a comic verse on biographical topics consisting of 2 couplets and an aabb rhyme scheme. The first line is to name the individual. Form invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) at age sixteen. Very challenging to write humorous poetry!!!  Pub officially opens at 3 PM Boston time…drop by and read some more of these — or try your hand at comical verse and share yours with other dVerse readers!

Oh Provincetown!

lillian42 Comments

Gulls squawk, shout high pitched squeals,
breaking through the silent calm of early morn.
Waters so still at low tide, there is no lap
as sun glistened ripples lie mute in their beauty.
Are these the sounds of long past voices
altered by time, soaring above your land?

Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill.
Were their bare feet marred by these rock pebbles,
these shards of shell beneath my feet,
tumbled through years of artistic waves?
Indigo waters turn cobalt blue, ombré into sky.
Like one canvas piled upon another,
easels left for another day.

Muse to Jackson Pollack, Jack Kerouac,
Tony Kushner and Kurt Vonnegut.
Given voice by the calm and eloquent words
writ by Mary Oliver, resident of these dunes,
this town at the very tip of Cape Cod,
crooked arm of land surrounded by sea.

Leave the ocean and stroll into her streets.
See bawdy painted lips and swinging narrow hips,
drag queens, moving costumed forms,
tourists, gawkers, art and food afficionados,
hawkers outside beaded doors. Lovers of every kind.
hold hands, strut, saunter, smile and banter.
Sixty-thousand revelers by summer’s tides
ebbs to three-thousand in quiet snow encrusted streets,
appreciate winter palettes of whites and greys.

Oh Provincetown! Town of complexities.
Pilgrims’ pride rejected, settled by Portuguese fishermen
and wives who waited for their return from sea.
So many have claimed you.
So many have walked your streets,
marveled at your cinnabar setting suns,
danced on your sands of time.
And still you offer more.
More palettes of dawn and dusk.
More ocean tides and raucous waves.
More low tides that reveal your under life.
I revel to return again and again.
You hath cast your spell on me.

Our jetty – appears and disappears with the tide

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today, I am hosting and asking folks to write a “travelogue” poem. Take us somewhere! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston (eastern) time. Provincetown is located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. In November 1620, pilgrims on the Mayflower landed in the west end of Provincetown and wrote the Mayflower Compact there, before journeying on and settling across the bay in Plymouth. The Governor of the Plymouth Colony purchased the land of Provincetown in 1654 from the Chief of the Nausets for 2 brass kettles, 6 coats, 12 hoes, 12 axes, 12 knives and a box (see wikipedia). Provincetown has been the summer home for many fringe and reknowned artists and writers. Twenty-seven year old Eugene O’Neill produced his first play here in 1916 and spent the next nine years of his life in Ptown.

Senior Moments

lillian36 Comments

There comes a point in time
when life doesn’t migrate,
it meanders.

Meanwhile . . .
morning alarms come alive
coffee is gulped, black and strong.
Commuter rails and trails
fill with busy bees,
drones and queens with tasks ahead.
Life moves on a conveyor belt,
bar codes intact . . .

while I roll over,
wiggle my toes
and let the day unfold.

sunrise

Shared at dVerse, Open Link Night, a virtual pub for poets. Folks share a poem of their choice on OLN. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Photo: dawn in Provincetown, Cape Cod. 

 

Moonlight

lillian31 Comments

Daytime, meandering through the Peabody Essex Museum. I stopped to stand and look at a painting on the wall. The looking turned to gazing. Time shifted and everything disappeared. I was under the stars, the shifting clouds. Felt night’s cool air upon my face. Marveled at the moon’s path upon glistening sea. This magical night enveloped me. There was no one else. Nowhere else. Until a tap upon my shoulder made me turn my head.

luminous moon
reflects beauty in darkened sea
neath star spattered sky

img_5072

Double posting today! (see also Wishful Thinking) Written for dVerse haibun Monday where Toni, the maven of haibuns, asks us to write about the night sky. A haibun consists of a short, concise paragraph of prose that cannot be fiction, followed by a haiku. PHOTO taken at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA:  Moonlight, created in 1892, oil on canvas. Painted by impressionist Childe Hassam (1859 – 1935). The scene is from Appledore Island, the largest of the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire, where he spent many a summer at the cottage of Celia Thaxter. 

Wishful Thinking

lillian54 Comments

There are grey days
cloud descendant misty days
loud angry thunder days
torturously grueling tortoise days
furiously frenetic days
and there are flowers.

Petals for the gathering.

Sunflower fields
heady lilacs, sweet moss rose
shasta daisies, brown-eyed susans
and anytime-of-day four o’clocks.
All ye readers, come flower with me.
Close your eyes and just imagine

a world in bloom, not aflame,
an every hour morning glory.

Written for dVerse Tuesday Poetics where Mish asks us to make a wish today. All photos taken from various vacations, walks around Boston and Provincetown.