Cherished

Iowa Morning

lillian30 Comments

Septuagenarian farmer sows seed.
His eyes shine brightly
imagining possibilities.
One last bumper crop
then winter’s rest.

Pinning percale sheets on line,
she turns to stare across the fields,
proud of him, their land, their children.
Inside clapboard farmhouse
baking bread wafts yeasty scent.

Written for Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. De is hosting and asks us to literally ponder possibilities. Key word to use in our exactly 44 word poem (sans title) is “possible” or a form of the word. Photo from pixabay.com

Rubicund Me Rosy Red

lillian45 Comments

Christmas is red,
with or without snow.
I am tone deaf but rosy carols come naturally.
Heart blooms musically as cheeks blush rouged.
Passed in ’98, mother’s memory crimson bright,
tinsel lover carefully silvered red bauble balls.
Red skirt paled beneath gauzy apron always smudged
snowy confectioner sugar streaks and gravy tracks.
Life’s red blood stopped as father’s bubble lights died.
Mulled wine evokes spiced rubicund scent.
Red hot ire most of the time creamsicles to softer pink.
Passion flames blend to ever-companion,
berry bright books and lover in my bed.
Down comforter snuggled save cold red nose,
which brings me back to Rudolph.
Christmas is red.

Today Grace hosts dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. She is teaching us about synesthesia, a “neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic, involuntary experiences of a second one.” Today, we are focusing on Grapheme Color Synesthesia, the most widely studied and common type of synesthesia.

For today’s prompt, we are to write about color from the perspective of a synesthete. Pick one color or several colors and create our own dictionary of color. What I chose to do was write in a stream-of-consciousness format, reacting to the color red. Photo is Christmas tree of my childhood. My mother loved tinsel.

A Time to Cherish

lillian20 Comments

November winds strip trees of autumn glory.
Squirrels scamper in fallen leaves,
seeking nuts for winter stash.
We come inside, to this warm home
many of us coming from miles away.
We reconnect, play with little ones,
share new stories and old ones too.
We talk of elders who for so many years
graced the adult table when we were young.
This feast we put upon the table today
turkey, dressing, and all the fixings
cause for joy.
But the real feast is so much more.
It is the sharing, the sitting with,
the laughter and the caring.
It is in the actual gathering.
Our family in thanksgiving,
witness to our love.

Sanaa is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. She asks us today to think about what November means to us. Sadly, because of Covid, this will be the first time in fifty years, we will not travel to Chicago to be with our extended family for Thanksgiving. We miss them. Illustration: Norman Rockwell’s famous painting, Freedom from Want, which is in public domain.

Hope on the Horizon

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In the darkness before dawn
we await so much.
Equality, justice,
civility, health.

I feel the arms of hope
reach out to comfort us.
Envelop our earth’s girth,
wrap ‘round this country’s soul.

In the darkness before dawn
we know in our hearts
the sun always perseveres.
It rises phoenix-like,

breaks through tumultuous clouds
strikes down darkness
and births a new day.

Photo: a recent dawn in our beloved Provincetown.

Love Is . . .

lillian30 Comments

Just twenty months apart, they grew up together. Whispered secrets through a grate between their bedroom walls. Shared stories at supper time. Shared chores on family camping vacations. One tent for the four of us. Four small blue canvas chairs always set up by the campfire site. We sat together talking. Sometimes stared at stars and moon; watched ember sparks glow. They always slept soundly when the lantern was doused, even in their teenage years. Cocooned in sleeping bags.

Years later, they live six-hundred miles apart. Raising their families. Busy with life. Those starry nights are part of who they are. Like deep and long roots sustaining the stately oak, those special times inform how they define family. I wonder if in their dreams, they sleep with the moon shared between them still. Far apart, but always akin.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, Merril is hosting and asks us to include the line “In their dreams, they sleep with the moon” in a story or memoir (some type of prose; cannot be poetry). The line is from Mary Oliver’s Death at Wild River.

To Everything There is a Season

lillian54 Comments

City folk turned country dwellers
we weathered through the seasons.
First-time home-owners on thirty acres,
we rented out our fields.
Watched corn and wheat planted,
then flourish in hot Iowa sun.

Harvest seasons came and went.
Like shapeshifters,
acres changed their landscaped views.
Plant, tend, reap, rest.
We marked off years waiting,
hoping for a blooming of our own.

And then, pregnant with expectation
we watched my belly grow,
just as the wheat and corn grew tall.
Similar to mother earth that year,
we gave birth, finding sustenance
in the fruits of our labor.

And then one bright September day
we brought our daughter home.
Stood blinking from the sun’s glare
holding her up amidst the fields,
thankful for new life
in this, our season of joy.  

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. Today, Rose is guest hosting and titles her prompt “Waiting on Wheat” – asking us to somehow write about wheat within our poem. Photos are from our homestead in Iowa, in 1974. Yep – that’s me with our daughter on the day I came home from the hospital. In those days, it was common to stay in the hospital for 5 days! Even after a normal birth. My how times have changed! The title for the poem comes from Ecclesiastes in the Bible and was also turned into a wonderful song written by Pete Seeger, first recorded in 1959.

A Child’s Wish Updated

lillian28 Comments

Would that we all could be
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,
sailing and bobbing along
on beautiful misty seas.

Snuggled together in our boat
lullaby waves softly lulling,
drifting slowly under the stars
off to the shores of Neverland.

Never the hatred,
never the strife.
Never the sadness
never the Covid-19.

Yes, I’ll be Wynken and you be Blynken,
both with our lids shut tight.
Smile with me and together shall we
nod off to the shores of Neverland.

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Sarah is hosting Tuesday Poetics today at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. She asks us to write about boats. For me, the first thing that came to mind was the poem Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. My mother often read it to me when I was very young….always just before bedtime. The poem was written by American writer and poet, Eugene Field and first published on March 9, 1889.  Photo illustration is from the actual book my mother read to me from, Volume One, Poems of Early Childhood, in Childcraft in Fourteen Volumes, published by the Quarrie Corporation, Chicago, in 1947. I’ve obviously also taken liberty with Peter Pan’s Neverland! 

Always with us . . .

lillian29 Comments

are the sun,
the moon, the sky
and the stars.

Sometimes harder to see
are filaments of joy.
They always hover near.

If we open our hearts
look up, look about,
we will find them.

As this morning dawns
and hope rises,
let us seek at least one.

Let us live today
with the incandescence of joy.

sunrise-182302_1920

Previously posted and then shared on OLN at dVerse where Mish is hosting today.
Photo: dawn in Provincetown, 2019.

Catharsis 1906

lillian20 Comments

Ship of dreamers
homeland left behind.
We cross vast seas,
anxiety churned by pitching waves.

Land nears.
Hope rekindled,
we stand tall,
crane to see her torch.

Hands clasped, excitement peaks.
Grinning widely we circle round,
dance exuberantly
as she comes into view.

We are joyful Swedes,
ready to begin anew.

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Brian Miller, founder of dVerse, helps us celebrate the pub’s 8th anniversary today by providing the prompt. He wants us to capture a moment in our poem, reminding us that moments come with a context. The happenings before and after the moment. Today I write motivated by a Hallberg family photo, taken in 1906, at the moment Hjalmer Hallberg and friends saw the Statue of Liberty, when coming to this country from Sweden. I write in the first person, trying to imagine this moment.