All We Need

buttercup_meadow_pointed_flower

Have you ever just escaped the craziness of the world by tent camping? It makes you realize how little we really need to be happy.

All We Need

We travel at a hurried pace
away from a stoplight-elevator-world
toward those long-planned
six nights and days.

The tread wheel flattens
heart rates slow
as the green meadow comes into view
scattered clumps of butter-cups and violets.

Personnas molted, we sit
and breathe deeply
the kind of gut-breaths
that expand the good parts of your brain.

Coffee gurgles over the fire
lit by one match
branches, twigs and
scraps of yesterday’s paper.

The one we quickly scanned
standing up at the glass table
gulping from mugs
with ergonomic handles.

With long swishing swallows
of aromatic elixir
we watch our six day world
through the thick mesh of a tent flap.

Rain starts to fall
quietly in that all day soaking way –
so we laugh
and clink our tin cups together.

Secrets One and Two

We all have them, right?   Secrets can be delicious or debilitating, wonderful or horrific. So here’s the question to think about. At some time in our lives, have we all had both?
 

Secret One                                                  

A secret so sublime
you long to swirl it
relish it slowly
like the first pour
of fine red wine
as it coats the glass
anticipation heightens
the tasting as divine
as the telling.

 

Secret Two

A secret so potent
like anger
wind-whipped current
roaring through
the sea wall of your mind
unrelenting persistent
batters forward
again and again
through rock hard edges
until released in spews
shattered feelings spent.

Pollyanna

If you haven’t read my About, now would be a good time. Looking at this post, it seems to fit with who I am quite well.

Sunflower

Pollyanna

She was called a pollyanna.
Positive exclamation addicted
she high-stepped and varied her pace
through life’s shifting textures.

Retrieving sea glass and a scallop-cut piece of shell
from the day’s foam ruffled waves
at the edge of iridescent aquamarine.

She lived as a greeter.
Always expectant, rounding each corner
to meet until-now unfound friends or catch
a coin’s shiny glint from the sidewalk’s crevasse.

A collector too, she gathered smiles as she
walked past and sometimes toward faces
moving to their meeting places for the day.

She said regrets lead backward.
Ruminations rehash long ago or too current
memories looking for what-ifs and what-thens
not in her mind the stuff of collectibles.

She chose to live today
and dream tomorrow
always loving forward.

This was written in response to a poetry class writing prompt: think about your regrets.  I sat down with my journal, a morning cup of coffee, and began to “spill” on the page. Thoughts, not coffee. And then I stopped. Not fun. And it wasn’t me. So I started again and out came Pollyanna. Have you heard the term? I can define it by something my daughter once said to me, Mom, every movie can’t be The Sound of Music!!!

The picture is from Provincetown, MA, many years ago. It just seems to fit with this post, right?  Besides, sunflowers always make me smile.