The cormorant held its breath
and disappeared from sight.
Black, long necked sleek bird,
ducked under, gone.
Like an actor in the second act
it pops up in a different place
new school of fish
different shoreline.
Would that we could do that
shift the paradigm
be a revisionist cormorant,
hold our breath
and recreate the scene.
She got up on the wrong side of the bed
to a cacophony of sound.
Cats with top hats chased red booted unicorns
down the neon road
beneath her webbed feet.
Flamingos squawked,
slipping up a red licorice slide.
A bubble floated by
with Dorothy and Toto on a hammock inside,
stretched from one iridescent curve to the other.
She wanted to climb inside and lie down
or find some peppermint tea.
She licked her fingers
and slowly remembered
those funny looking mushrooms
on the other side of the bed.
Photo taken on our Alaska hike through the Tsongas Forest.
Wrap around porch with hanging swing
iced tea chats and potted plants
playing dolls with Junie Z
on a summer night lit by fireflies.
Sliding glass door shut ramrod tight
concrete slab with charcoal grill
removed from prying eyes.
Two steps to double locked doors
reined in yard with triple garage
and wooden horse blinder fence.
The word neighbor? Gone.
It hopped a moving van,
took a right on the expressway
and drove right out of our lexicon.
Multiple street corners I tried
army surplus wool blanket
wrapped round hunched shoulders
day old newspapers, my insoles
battered red plastic cup extended
as you rushed by, unseeing passersby
and me, invisible
like the harsh winds you leaned in to
and so I left your world,
ascended to the clouds.
My spirit lives in blue skies
afloat in soft nothingness.
Look up you passersby. See me
reflected in your corporate glass buildings.
But you, marionettes to a status master
strings taut, look straight ahead
rush with dayplanner blinders
unaware of natural beauty,
never mind the street people
dead or alive, we are all invisible.
In response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge: (extra)ordinary….beautiful everyday things. Clouds are ordinary occurrences…as are street people in the city.
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.
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.
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.
The glass is clean today
and we are quiet on either side.
One hand at rest,
age lines etched in black skin
fingers curled.
Mom sits closely by, always watching.
Her babe with impish chatter,
swings away
quickly scampers home
safely tucked inside those long warm arms.
You sit, eyes not meeting mine,
lips pursed, a sadness to your face.
Which of us, in this family,
is behind the glass,
and which of us in front?
Where does this zoo begin,
and where does it really end?
Photos from our visit last year to San Diego Zoo. Post in response to Daily Post Photo Challenge: Connected.
If you look with the mind of mother earth, in this place called Alaska, you become the earth.
Great calving sheets of ice seen from the haven of a cruise ship. We roar in excitement as you roar in pain. Losing part of yourself to the sea.
My boots trek through forest, stumble on tree roots, your uprooted veins. In the midst of rocky debris, at the toe of Laughton Glacier, a new sound. The relentless trickle of water into a glacial stream. Tears unabated, you weep cold rivulets, slowly, through hundreds of generations.
And I see. And I hear. Like a jagged shard of ice thrust through my heart. I understand this insidious thing we blithely call global warming. And I am chilled to the bone.
A prose poem, in the style of Joy Harjo.
Photos: Top: great slabs of ice shed from Mendenhall Glacier. Above left: standing on the “toe” of Laughton Glacier, after hiking 6.5 miles through Tsongas Forest and climbing through rocks on her debris field. This picture shows a gap — the “black cave” created by the ice melting…continuously dripping. The “rock” above the cave is the ice itself, narrowed from melting. It will eventually collapse into itself. All that you see above the “cave” is ice with debris its carried in its forward path. Right: the “ice field” our ship had to go through to get to Hubbard Glacier….which can be seen in the distance. Result of glacier calving.
See views of the glaciers themselves with my poem, In the Midst of Glaciers.
A different take on the Daily Post Photo Challenge: from every angle.
She sat with the counselor
and tried to explain
to divulge in words
what had not been said
for too many years.
Over-size
dime-store dark glasses
hid the terror trail
as she sat, tense
alert, waiting.
Hands clasped in lap
hid fingernails
chewed to nothingness
feet pressed on floor, heels together
knees together too.
A posture learned
to pull in, retreat
be small
in the smallest
amount of space.
She flinched
as he leaned in
and so he adjusted
settled back in the chair
to listen with his eyes.
And finally
she answered
slowly
each word mumbled
yet distinct.
I feel like
a sandwich cookie
pryed open
pulled apart
licked raw
and gnawed upon
crumb by crumb
and now
I am totally consumed.
lillian the home poet 