Relationships

Crocus Me

lillian13 Comments

Born in May these many years ago,
amongst lily of the valley
and gaiety of tulips bright.

I am like the crocus
enjoying first rays of spring sun
in the midst of winter’s final stance.

Assertive, I push forward
first to appear,
even when slicked with chilling frost.

During coldest of times
I burrow in found comfort.
Your arms, ready to enfold me.

Like Mother Earth,
you are my home
in every season of the year.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Sanaa asks us to “become the embodiment of winter. Tell us what you feel during this season.” Crocus Me is where my muse took me!

NOTE: HOPE you will join us this Thursday, Jan 19, from 3 to 4 PM EST for OLN LIVE . . . OR . . . for the first time, on Saturday, Jan 21, from 10 to 11 AM EST.

You’ll find two links on Thursday’s dVerse: one for Thursday and one for Saturday. Clicking on the link will bring you to a live session with audio and video! Come meet your fellow dVersers and either read one of your poems aloud or just come to listen! The more the merrier! We’re a very friendly bunch!

Twelve lines do make a poem . . .

lillian24 Comments

May you burn in hell,
I truly hope so.

Sun still shines at dawn
to cause their demise
at Charter Street Burial Ground.

I crave escape.
A pen, and a plethora of words
curtailing his gigolo lust,
two stars over, from above the moon.

Respect provides a healthier view.
Illuminated on my tree,
“There is good in this world.”


Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe where today is Meet The Bar Day. Laura asks us to look at the most recent poems we’ve written, preferably the last twelve poems, and taking the last lines from each of the poems, rearrange them into a new poem! A poetic sudoku! I did exactly that, not adding any words; not using enjambment (splitting words over two lines). These are the exact words from the last lines of the last twelve poems I posted to dVerse, (minus a prosery prompt since that was prose). Interesting how it turned out. Photo is from a visit to Glendalough, Ireland on a cruise a number of years ago.

When the World is a Blur

lillianLeave a comment

When the world is a blur
we reach out.
Grab a hand we trust
to steady ourselves.
In today’s world
the question becomes,
whose hand can we trust?

Must we ride a mad bull,
bucking twenty-four/seven
careening through disasters,
red flags hurled at us?
Deafening roars
blocking out the rational
in a cacophony of noise?

Some days I seek the easy chair,
slump contentedly, eyes closed,
listen to nothing, just breathe.
I know you are in the next room
ready to provide the steady hand.
You are the reminder,
there is good in this world.

With Folded Hands

lillian28 Comments

Faith came much easier when I was young.
I believed in Purgatory.
That half-way house you might need
before your final reward.
I’d say three Hail Marys for the one lucky soul
who needed exactly that many words
to move out and ascend to heaven.
My lips moved silently,
hands folded, head bowed, like I learned
in Immaculate Conception Grade School.
Then I’d say a very loud Amen and grin.
Good deed done for the day!
These days, as a septuagenarian,
I realize that for some people
hell is right here on earth.
Hail Marys don’t seem to cut it
when a Black man gets shot in the back
while innocently jogging down a street.
I don’t grin anymore
at the end of my prayers.

Shared with dVerse today, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Today is OLN LIVE from 3 to 4 PM and OLN. I’m hosting today….so hope to see many folks there. Photo is my hands this morning.

For the Love of Harold

lillian24 Comments

Widowed at eighty-three, she didn’t cry until they closed the lid on Harold. Never to see him again in that beautiful dark blue suit, worn on so many of their date nights over many years. The love of her life, resting in the Peters-Carmody Funeral Home, before the hearse would take him away.

Five years later, Maud Smith noticed an elderly woman sitting in the front row of mourners patiently waiting for Father David to begin the rosary. She approached the funeral director and quietly asked “Who is that old woman in the front row? Why is she sitting with my family?”

“That’s Mrs. Crowley, ma’am. She often comes to our viewings if the decedent is male. Her husband Harold’s service was here five years ago. I think she imagines him lying there, near her again. You see, to her, death is quite romantic.”

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Bjorn is hosting Prosery Monday, where a line from poetry is given and then must be used, word for word, in a piece of prose that is 144 words or less, sans title. Today the line is from Bob Dylan, “To her, death is quite romantic.”
Image from Pixabay.com

Breaking Point

lillian27 Comments

That was it. She’d had it. Sliced away, leaving a scar on the ancient bark, the tree looked raw. Desecrated. His handiwork obliterated.

That night of infatuation, he carved a heart with their initials right there for all the town to see. “We’re forever entwined” he said. Except they weren’t. He left for college and never returned. It’d been years. She’d waited tables at the Oleander Café. Endured the town folk’s talk behind her back. Their whispers haunted her. They knew she’d carried his child for six months before the miscarriage. People pitied her.

She knew he was never coming back. She dropped the knife and walked out to meet the dusty road. She hailed the first bus she saw. Paid cash and finally got the hell out of there. No matter the bus’ destination, it was her turn to leave it all behind.

Written for dVerse where today Sarah is hosting our Prosery session. She asks us to include the line “she’d had it sliced away leaving a scar” from Michael Donaghy’s poem, Liverpool.

What is Prosery? A Prosery prompt gives a line from a poem and we are to include it in a piece of flash fiction of 144 words, sans title. The line must be word for word, although the punctuation may be changed.

Life as an Hourglass

lillian15 Comments

My life is like a fragile hourglass
sand grains drop through.
Some moments I savor
slip past me before
I can taste them.
Other times
lag behind
move so
slowly
I can
not
stand
it and so
I open my
mouth and
scream aloud.
I want to control
each and every grain
of my life, especially now
in our winter season when the
path ahead is far shorter than the
glorious one we’ve been blessed to share.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, DAY 28. Today the prompt is to  write a concrete poem, in which the lines are shaped in a way that mimics the topic of the poem. Also shared with dVerse, the virtual pub for poets, where today it’s OLN: Open LInk Night where we can share any one poem of our choosing.

Ah. . . Perchance to Sleep

lillian19 Comments

This star lit night my lovely dear,
we lie entwined, our lips so near.
Our spirits joined in dreams to soar
until you break the spell to snore.

You grunt and groan and sputter snort.
I toss, I turn, till last resort
my patience worn from all that sound,
my need for sleep is so profound,

I trippingly flee our marriage bed
collapse undone, on couch instead.
And when the sky is lit with dawn
to your side, again I’m drawn.

Alarm rings loud, you wake refreshed
our bodies once again enmeshed.
While you leap up to greet the day,
I’m just ready to hit the hay.

Originally written in early 2019, tweaked for Open Link Night LIVE at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe.

Click here at 3 PM Boston time today, to join us LIVE at dVerse! Come to read your own poem and hear others; or just to listen. The more the merrier!

A little humor is good for the soul! Also shared on NAPOWRIMO Day 14, off prompt today.

And she asked him . . .

lillianLeave a comment

Isn’t what amazing?
Ants tugging five-thousand times their weight?
Fibonacci’s relationship to the nautilus shell?
Humming birds’ wings
beating fifty-three times per second?
Women growing human beings inside their bodies?
Yes. Yes. Yes. And definitely yes.

So what makes you so amazing?
You forcing me to take your name if we wed?
You making laws to govern my body?
You body-shaming me
while you’re lugging around your beer gut?
Yes. Oh please, please tell me, yes.
Exactly what makes you so amazing?

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 13. Today’s prompt challenges us to write from the perspective of “everything’s going to be amazing” . . . I admit. I went a little off-kilter with this one!