When you have lost someone you truly love
How do you pick up the pieces of your life,
Handle the misery of being alone at night?
What do you do with a heart that won’t heal?
Where do you go to hide your terrible grief?
When will the hurt subside just a little?
What do you do with all those mementos?
Where do you keep them so that
They don’t reopen all those wounds?
Is it ever possible to actually forget?
Could you just reach inside your heart and
Tear out those endless memories of love?
Can you? I am asking for help from everywhere
Yet at night, and some times during the day,
The ache seems never to diminish at all.
Why couldn’t we have gone out together?
Will it always cut this deeply in my heart?
I am glad I have these long nights
When I can be alone to communicate
With my heart’s memories of her.
THE HOSTILE PLANET
Even as scarp grows green again
Or adds an additional lovely curve
To terrain,
Rubble and bones
Lie deepening
Forgotten under its new growth
And new beauty.
It is a hostile planet,
When you come right down to it—
For mankind, that is.
We make our small
(or sky-rising abodes)
Upon the “innocent” hills of green,
Or deep in high valleys,
Or high on mountain steep—
But when the planet shakes
In frivolous dance of quivers,
Our little homes crumble.
THE SOFTNESS OF ANGER
You loved me.
Your anger wrapped me
In a softness, the delicate warmth
Of the receiving blanket
Comforting a newborn infant.
You loved me.
Fear for me birthed your fire.
I stood in your anger and
I was not afraid.
AUTHOR NOTES
GLASS RAIN—the poetry of Margaret Roxby
“THE HOSTILE PLANET” is included this month for United Nations World Habitat Day, October 2. The poem was found among the author’s unfinished writings, but expresses her often spoken opinion that we live on a hostile planet.
REFRACTIONS—the poetry of Robert Roxby
“GETTING OLD” is included this week in honor of October 1, UN International Day of Older Persons. The poem was found in the author’s poetry journal.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—the poetry of Kathleen Roxby
“THE SOFTNESS OF ANGER” is included this week in honor of October 3, National Boyfriend’s Day. The author wrote this poem about a moment when a young man, hopeful suitor, harangued her for putting herself in danger of getting injured. Never before had she felt unthreatened when anger was directed at her, thus this poem. The poem appears in Wheelsong Poetry Anthology 4.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission:
SPLINTERS FOR SEPTEMBER 2024
BEING ALONE
When you have lost someone you truly love
How do you pick up the pieces of your life,
Handle the misery of being alone at night?
What do you do with a heart that won’t heal?
Where do you go to hide your terrible grief?
When will the hurt subside just a little?
What do you do with all those mementos?
Where do you keep them so that
They don’t reopen all those wounds?
Is it ever possible to actually forget?
Could you just reach inside your heart and
Tear out those endless memories of love?
Can you? I am asking for help from everywhere
Yet at night, and some times during the day,
The ache seems never to diminish at all.
Why couldn’t we have gone out together?
Will it always cut this deeply in my heart?
I am glad I have these long nights
When I can be alone to communicate
With my heart’s memories of her.
SUMMER ENDS
Dark cloud-scarf
(Jewel-warmed night)
Is folded now,
Inch-small
Palm-lost,
Time’s hand
Fleeter than cutlass
And the heart’s beat
Has cruelly cut
Our firefly summer.
Glittering Scorpio
With great Antares’ copper amulet
Swinging on the throat of night
Alas,
Gone into blue Autumn smoke.
LIKE A DARK WIND IN THE NIGHT
I rode the night sky
Like a dark wind
And the perfume of my hair
Fell upon the shore
To the wonderment of scavengers
Night birds echoed my song
And sailors stirred in their sleep
Lured half-awake
By the lilt of its melody
The moon sought to find me
But searched the night in vain
While distant stars mirrored back
The bits of sunlight I had caught
And sprinkled, like fairy dust,
On to the darkened sea
I played amid the harbor fogs,
The dews and the mists,
Reveling in their mystery
Welcoming their loneliness
Like a dark wind
I rode the night sky
Leaving memory, like driftwood,
Abandoned on the sand
AUTHOR NOTES
GLASS RAIN—the poetry of Margaret Roxby
“SUMMER ENDS,” is included this week in honor of September 22, the last day of summer.END OF SUMMER, September 22. It is interesting to note that the author had a lifelong interest in the stars in the night sky.
REFRACTIONS – the poetry of Robert Roxby
“BEING ALONE” is included this week in honor of September 28, Good Neighbor Day. The poem was found in the author’s poetry journal and is undoubtedly written after the death of his wife of fifty-one years.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—the poetry of Kathleen Roxby
“LIKE A DARK WIND IN THE NIGHT” is included this week in honor of September 21, UN International Day of Peace
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Readers who write in response to one of the prompts listed each month in Splintered Glass, may see their work presented here on the last week of that month. Though poems are preferred, short prose work will also be considered for publication.
Guidelines for submission: