Life

Driven

lillian48 Comments

He lost his head that day.
Disappeared into green lush woods,
the gardens of his mind.
Some nurturing space of his own design
between the borders of insanity and reason.

City engineer.
Day in and day out
he plotted and planned.
Highways, byways
throughways and roundabouts.
Traffic control,
exit ramps and entry lanes.
Cement road-snakes for autopilot mannequins.
Metal caskets on wheels,
rushing here and there and everywhere.

Head full, he just stopped.
Could not cope.
Could not recognize
patterns, directions,
escape routes from today
into the morrows.

And so he stared,
that morning at his desk.
Never moved.
Retreated into a nowhere,
his forest of nothingness.

IMG_6094

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today, Grace is hosting and asks us to use the word “border” within the poem or in the title. And, extra credit if we write somehow about a mental state.
Sculptur is in the de Cordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln Massachusetts. Eternal Presence by John Wilson, 1987; a study for the full size, seven-foot tall sculpture which stands outside the National Center for Afro-American Artists in Boston.

 

The Process

lillian7 Comments

Mindful verbosity
irridescent gems within my mind,
words shiver flutter, push for prominence.
Ideas flow through synapses
sometimes like scattered leaves
rearranged by sudden gusts.
Poetic musing wrestles reality.
Cacophonous silent noise
atonal at times,
until the coda appears.
photo-8

See Me Beautiful

lillian65 Comments

I stand
before the mirror of time,
body so different
from my youthful days.

Behold the origamic shapeshifter,
like that ancient Japanese artistic form.
I have been myriads of reiterations
sans pencil, paint and cutting board.

I see an intricacy of lines
deftly creased again and again
touched by life and love.
I am beauty within my folds.

Written for dVerse where today Kim asks us to write a poem to help someone facing a problem such as “finding your first wrinkle” or the “birthday blues.”  

Life’s Palette

lillian59 Comments

Ring me a path round the sun,
rainbow filaments in cloud tulle veil
daffodil slippers, bluebelle gloves
and dew drop rouge.

Kaleidoscope living on a color wheel.
Storm-grey ombrés to brightest white
pale pink to fuscia bold,
my patina glows.




Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where it’s Quadrille Monday (poem of exactly 44 words, not including the title). De is hosting and prompts us with the word “storm.”  Photos of yesterday’s amazing sky in Andover, MA. Artist’s palette is outside a studio in St George, Bermuda. 

Supplicant

lillian53 Comments

She stood at the abyss
stared straight ahead, contemplating.

To gaze down and succumb,
or look up and search the night sky,

seek one shooting star
one point of light, one gift her quest:

a day followed by tomorrows.

img_0112

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. The prompt for today is to write a poem using the word “gift.”  Consider the many ways the word can be used: gift of gab, a special trait, a package wrapped in ribbons, gifting someone, etc. Photo: Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us!

The Shadow Knows

lillian29 Comments

There are places and times for pure childlike delight.

We’d been through a stressful year. Death hovered too close to our family. Through the miracles of modern medicine, assisted by angels along the way, we survived. And so we ferried in September to our beloved Provincetown at the very tip of Cape Cod. We walked for miles at water’s edge, marveling at the vast ocean. Our mortal footprints disappeared as the tide returned to shore. We witnessed new dawns. Gazed at a glistening moon path on darkest nights. It was a time of contemplation and somber thankful prayers. 

Until that early morn. Standing in the cool sand, my shadow elongated before me. Cast like a circus lady on stilts. Like mirrors where clowns stretch tall or wide. Magnified to the absurd. And it birthed a smile. And then a chuckle. And then a laugh. Pure childlike delight far beyond my years. And it felt good. 

owls perch and observe
cows chew their cud in solemnity 
spring lambs frolic free


It’s Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, and Toni asks us to write about shadows. Any kind of shadows. A Haibun includes one or two paragraphs of prose and it cannot be fiction. The prose is followed by a haiku (3 lines with syllable counts of approximately 5, 7, 5). Haikus are about nature and include a seasonal word. Photo is my shadow in Provincetown.