He was a thick-skinned old coot. And no one knew his history.
He just seemed to appear one day. On the park bench. He sat there
with the pigeons, newspapers crumpled in his lap. Never talked,
never flinched when the kids hit baseballs close or when the rain fell.
I’d rush by and he just stared. At the newspapers, in his lap. All that summer,
he sat like that. And then he was gone. Like the summer’s warmth. Just gone.
WP Writing 201 prompts: Prose poem, skin, internal rhyme.
A single red-orange leaf
floats unnoticed to the earth.
Acorns and hickory nuts
ping and thud upon the roof.
Once proud tall hollyhocks
droop in frostbit demise.
Logs lit to flame, hiss steam
hoarfrost warmed in hearth.
I sit, crocheted afghan in my lap
coffee mug nearby
and savor the season.
Angels here among us
dearest, stay with me.
Over and back you hover
return to earth my plea.
Extinguish not, like inifinity
deny death’s call and stay with me.
This poem, dedicated to the love of my life. Life regifted for two years and many more: you came back to me. Thankful for every day. This poem is an acrostic: the first letter of each line spells out a message (Adored). Photo from on board ship on a Panama Canal cruise.
Like a blurry scrim
hanging on the back stage wall,
she veiled her feelings
as she played her role in life,
in the spotlight but aloof.
In response to WP Writing 201: Poetry, Day One. Three prompt options: 1) write a haiku or tanka; 2) include the word “screen” or write about some type of screen; 3) use alliteration. I’ve hit 2 out of 3. This tanka (syllabic lines of 5-7-5-7-7) uses a scrim as its primary image. A scrim is a piece of gauze cloth that appears opaque until lit from behind — often used as a screen or backdrop in the theater.
Pointillists paint millions of dots
until one image appears.
Up close blur
becomes meaningful
with three steps back.
Even a merry-go-round stops
lets passengers on and off,
provides a straight steel pole
to ease the way
in its calliope whirl.
Perhaps the answer then
is a palette or a shiny black steed
to guide me through
and make some sense
of this place you call life.
Boundaries between this world and the next
blur as I stand in mist
feet upon the earth, arms raised
billowness seeping from the sky.
I tip my face into the hovering cloud
spirit worlds surround me
and you are here,
my cheeks moist from your caress.
Slowly, sadness comes with warmth
as sun clears the air, blues the sky
eyes tear to realize
I am grounded, and you
are truly gone.
In response to Daily Post Challenge: Boundaries. Photos from dome car ride near Anchorage, Alaska.
My mother lived with Amy Lowell.
Wrong preposition.
In, she lived in
a Boston housing complex
with a plaque.
Did you know her?
Amy, not Helen.
Tomboy turned poet-ess.
Way before Maya.
Not Emily.
Less famous.
Except there’s a plaque
where Helen Cecile lived.
Photos: Amy Lowell Apartment Complex in Boston, the plaque and Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925). Born in Brookline, MA won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry posthumously in 1926. First published poem appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1910. First published collection of her poetry, A Dome of ManyColured Glass appeared in 1912. Maya refers to poet Maya Angelou; Emily to Emily Dickinson. Last photo is Helen Cecile, my mother, in her last year of life. She was born in Waukegan, Illinois and moved with us to Boston in 1997 – lived in the Amy Lowell Apartments and died in 1999.
Phyllis Groat, Billy Behr and Timmy Drew
Francis somebody with Jimmy Fisher
and Mary Buckley too.
Black robed nuns that seemed to glide
feet and hair a mystery
rulers that reached a mile.
Lunch time stools swung in and out
from tables that disappeared
into Mary blue block walls.
Holy card for first place prize.
Priests mumbled Latin mass
and girls watched holy backs.
Third grade fell out of mother’s drawer,
a stained photo stuck between dried up pens
and a Tupperware orange peeler.
Three days after we buried her
in a Catholics only plot,
she made me remember
what I deliberately forgot.
Photos: 3rd grade class photo mentioned was tossed….but these were also in the drawer. Me in my 3d grade Immaculate Conception School navy blue uniform and my first communion picture. I actually won a third grade competition to see who could learn the altar boy responses in Latin first (our third grade boys were lagging in this important task — it was thought this would spur them on). Silly me – I thought if I won I could be an altar boy. See that word? “Boy.” Nope. I did win a gold embossed holy card of St. Francis of Assisi and the boys all went on to assist with Mass. Memories…..
Their love never showed itself
in word or touch.
It simply travelled
through a colored atlas
of their own making.
Sunday rides in a battered Buick,
state highways traced in orange.
Twenty-fifth anniversary in Hawaii,
circled in pink
like their matching floral shirts.
Retired early, she insisted,
they sold all their worldly goods.
Left a three bedroom colonial
for a small motor home,
and rambled through forty states.
College towns starred in blue
for the young at heart.
Green highlights for favorite parks
and the Grand Canyon’s purple X,
the greatest site of all.
Now, in a pastel assisted living center
map of colors upon her wall,
she gazes out the window
at red and yellow tulips,
his ashes beneath their blooms.
With quaking hand
she touches coffee cup to pane,
then slowly to her lips.
This, their morning kiss, a ritual
now the road is still.
She listens to the waves
gently lapping on the shore
the gurgle before the swoosh;
feels the sun upon her face
watches it glisten on the sea
and feels content to sit and do
absolutely nothing.
lillian the home poet 