Far from home
We students wrote
To our families.
The others sent word:
Mother, there’s a foreigner
I’ve met…
And the answer came:
Sorry, not at this time.
When I wrote about
My foreign friend,
My answer was
“Of course, bring your friend.”
The others wrote again:
Father, my friend
Is of a different race…
In answer their fathers wrote:
Not here, my child,
Not now.
But when I wrote the same,
I was told, “Your friend is welcome
In our home.’
When the others wrote:
My friend is crippled, Dad…
Sorry, we can’t deal
With that here
My dad replied,
“We’ll manage somehow.
Tell us what is needed.”
The others wrote once more
My friend, Mother, does not
Share our beliefs, but…
Their mothers responded,
My son, what would we say
To one another? Sorry, no.
My family wrote:
“Perhaps your friend is wiser than we.
The door is open, a room prepared.
Bring your friend and hurry home.
We are waiting. Love from all of us.”
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 DECEMBER 2022
A WALK AT DAWN IN A STRANGE TOWN
On these streets I am a stranger
An interloper
A slight tang of awareness
Rippling across an ordinary day.
Perhaps because I am not intimate
With the history of these streets
My ears are vulnerable,
to their stories:
The babble, the songs
The wailing, the screams
A sigh, a whisper
Each reaches out to me
Wraps its insubstantial fingers
Around my throat
Till the shape of words
Erupts in my mind,
Without instrument or voice
melodies
Sway and weave about my feet
Till it is dancing shoes I wear
As I perform all alone here
On these unfamiliar streets
The people I pass are illusory
Disconnected images
Emerging out of the unknown
Then melting away
beyond the knowable
I wander these streets
As if in a dream
Thought flowing into thought
Not bound by logic’s limits
The morning is reluctant
To leave off dreaming
And I have been caught
Within the surreality
Of its waking
STORM OVER THE GRAND CANYON, At the North Rim
Sunset colorfloats red cloud mists
Above the awesome deep
Night comes
fierce, on panther feet
The distant dark growls closer…closer
Lightning
Electrifying
Terrifying
Skydances fire
Thundergrowl shakes the canyon steeps
Windsnarled rain pounces
Drums upon stonecrumbling paths
The storm searches for prey
Claws at cold iron spiderfrail fences
That perch along the danger rims
Milehigh edges erode a little more
Inching back in secret abandoning
Of the old guard rails
The storm insatiable
Leaps its power to the canyon floor
Obliterates the ribbonriver trail
Unseen the river rushes on
The storm rages
A catalyst
As age-old spirits rise
And new ones in tribal bond
Join ancient bones
To trace the timecarved stone.
REVERIE
Early twilight had arrived
The sun had dipped into West
Trailing sunset washed away
By the incoming blue of the night
The evening breeze was so soft
That it caressed all in the world below
Such simple pleasures to these old eyes
Sitting on the porch above the land
Seeing life’s renewal just below
As a mother duck with three behind
Crossed through the meadow in such majesty
Now the night sky puts on its show
When nightfall blacks out all light
But the septillion distant stars
Sleep deeply now my gentle soul
For a beauty of life is all around.
AUTHOR NOTES
GLASS RAIN—the poetry by Margaret Roxby
“STORM OVER THE GRAND CANYON, At the North Rim” was written around 1978 when the author visited there with her mother and husband.
REFRACTIONS— a poem by Robert Roxby
“REVERIE” first appeared in the author’s collection, Reflections on a Lifetime.
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS—the poetry of Kathleen Roxby
“A WALK AT DAWN IN A STRANGE TOWN” was inspired by a morning walk when the author was visiting Edinburgh, Scotland.
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 NOVEMBER 2022
HOMECOMING
Far from home
We students wrote
To our families.
The others sent word:
Mother, there’s a foreigner
I’ve met…
And the answer came:
Sorry, not at this time.
When I wrote about
My foreign friend,
My answer was
“Of course, bring your friend.”
The others wrote again:
Father, my friend
Is of a different race…
In answer their fathers wrote:
Not here, my child,
Not now.
But when I wrote the same,
I was told, “Your friend is welcome
In our home.’
When the others wrote:
My friend is crippled, Dad…
Sorry, we can’t deal
With that here
My dad replied,
“We’ll manage somehow.
Tell us what is needed.”
The others wrote once more
My friend, Mother, does not
Share our beliefs, but…
Their mothers responded,
My son, what would we say
To one another? Sorry, no.
My family wrote:
“Perhaps your friend is wiser than we.
The door is open, a room prepared.
Bring your friend and hurry home.
We are waiting. Love from all of us.”
FLOWERS IN THE AIR
There
Before me in beautiful design
Flowers
Rising in the air
I remember now
In later hours
The color, shape and greening line
Of stem and leaf
And this is strange:
I know
That roseate hue was one time born
For just that moment,
That spot to adorn