It’s gone.  I let it fall into the trash.

It was not meant to live with jewels encased.

A builder’s tool it was, and should have been

for fastening the non-abstract of life:

the corners, benches, table-tops and shelves.

And yet on velvet-red it lay for years

as honored there as all the golden chains.

With silent sorrow was it given me

and laid so gently upon my hand.

He had searched his pockets too empty large

and found one dully satin silver wing nut—

to give in place of the awaited goodnight kiss,

an offering to say goodbye, “It’s over…”

For he had found a more completing love

although his love for me had never failed.

In memory of tears and soft regret,

for many silver velvet years, it lay

with spreading upward outward seeking arms

to catch the master’s hand as tightly sealing

he would turn it finishing off his work.

Till, time drifted, it lay in chalklike gray,

and sugar-powder dust, so softly sifted,

fell upon the velvet there.

But now at last I’ve let it fall away—

the love, the dream too long held fast,

let slip from my hand, my life, so swiftly final

the ghosted gray, once satin silver, fallen…

disremembered.  But no, not yet—

an echo drifts in misting memory

still, of one love’s gentle dying light.

 

#LoveLost #LovePoetry #LoveandMemory #LoveTokens

The Great Freeze began slowly

With icy sleet filling the days

Stilling blood flow with stress

 

A swift break in weather

Led me into the unexplored

The waiting wilderness of chaos

 

There I trudged along

While sleet shifted into snow,

Snow into blizzard

 

The years passed

With a numbing silence

In which the glacier grew

 

Now and then, a crack sounded

A groan from within the glacial wall

Every Summer, but still no thaw

 

Ten frozen years

The only flowering, frost crystals

Quickly melting from my window

 

Then the time of fever rose

To add its heat to Spring’s warming

And the glacier calved into avalanche

 

Long-frozen water bled

Out over ice-sheet fields

Tumbled over cliffs

 

Growing wider, deeper

Flowing unconfined

Toward serenity in lake and sea

 

Words, freed from the ice

Of stolen time, spill from my fingers

I have begun to write again with joy

 

Pain

Freezing blood

To crystals

Gouging deep fiords

Through icicled muscle—

Yet, one toe

Dares to move—

 

A pallid sun

In an Arctic night

Proves hope

Beyond this pain

 

Tomorrow

May come

Summer rain

 

#PainandPoetry #WinterPoetry

One day when I was not yet six

I found in the early morning

A baby doll lying lost upon my porch.

I wondered who could have left it there

So naked and alone

 

A chocolate brown round chubby baby doll,

Just the right size for my child hands.

I scooped it up fast from the cold, cold stone

And warmed it in my arms.

 

Carrying it inside, I took clothes from my other dolls

To make my new child feel at home.

I smoothed my hands over her tight black curls

And laid my cheek against the smooth dark rose of hers.

I looked with love into her shining eyes

And smiled my heart at her pink baby smile.

 

My childhood friends, though, thought my baby doll strange

With her dark skin:

They’d never seen brown baby dolls.

I began to wonder why I had never seen

Another sweet brown baby doll

Though I looked in every toy display

Of every store I knew.

 

So, I asked my mama why my baby doll was brown.

And my mama told me

There were mamas and papas

Who were darkly brown

And their babies were deep brown, too, which was why

My orphan baby was so warmly chocolate brown.

 

I did not really understand at all,

But I loved my orphan child of brown

Until I grew too old for dolls.

It was then I learned

There were people afraid of brown,

Who hated Black,

And that white could be an ugly word.

It was then I first knew that I was White.

 

#RaceAwareness #Childhood #DollsandChildhood

They came through our home

Like animals

Come searching for food

When Winter has closed

The mountain passes.

 

Clumsy with a desperate need,

They came to steal our Spring.

But once returned

To their ice cavern home,

They found only the fragile petals

Of frozen flowers in their hands.

 

Again, and again they came.

And their angry hunger

Slashed at our contentment

Threatening the serenity

Of our Spring.

 

Till at last, they were exhausted,

Broken by the hopeless struggle

To bring Spring to the Winter

Land they called home.

 

Still they came—

To briefly know the warmth

Of a borrowed sun

In an alien land of Spring.

 

#DysfunctionalFamilies #ChildhoodandPoetry #SpringandWinter

Yesterday’s unspent rain

And the night’s dew

Weigh down the sky

Above the mountains.

 

Like wisps of hand-pulled angel-hair,

The fog lies in tufts

Across the eastern ridges.

 

Higher and farther north,

The whited air brooms

Like the tail of the artic fox,

Into the narrow valleys.

 

On the farthest and highest slopes,

The sky-fall lies upon the mountain

As thick and heavy as the fur-rich

Winter coat of the polar bear.

 

The air tastes of frost

And lies upon my cheek

Like the touch of snow.

My breath forms in puffs

Like miniature clouds.

 

As the words I speak

Roll themselves into visibility,

I ponder the weight of them

As they hang for the moment

Before my eyes.

 

What if, I think, I could hold these words,

These thoughts, in my hands as solid objects?

What if it were possible to know the spoken word

As if it were tactile? What then? What would we learn

From examining the shape and texture

Of those word-clouds?

What would they teach us about our world?

 

#WinterandPoetry #CloudsandPoetry

Air sweet with molasses

Or maple syrup

Sunday mornings

Warm and smooth to the touch

As pancakes

Spiced, bright with the chirp

Of bacon crisp and crunchy

 

Cool bedded dreaming

Bright with sparks

Of tree bark tickles

Hugs sun-warmed in fur

Wet with dog tongues

Snickers of hippos’

Twittering ears,

Elephants rolling

In the laughter of dust

 

The happy hours of brown

Warm and spicy

Bright and sparkling

The slippery muds of memory

Caked in giggles

Forever over-crusted fresh.

 

#BrownColor #ColorandPoetry

 

“Do you hear? Oh, can’t you hear!”

She whispered in her little sister’s ear.

“There!  Clip, clop…up on the roof!”

The drowzled child beside her

Pulled and pushed herself up

And out of her warm lullaby dream

To hear for real and always

The child magic sounds

Of Christmas Eve night.

They sat with prayerful, eager faces,

Eyes flashing with imagined secret sights.

Could anyone be as lucky as they?

Had any other child been blessed

With such a chance?

“Let’s go see!”

Tiny fingers pushed aside the heavy covers.

“No, you mustn’t!

You’re not supposed to watch him.

He wouldn’t like it.”

Back, back lay the sleepy heads

And soon the quickened heartbeats

Slowed to the hushed pit-pat

Of reindeer hooves waiting,

Patiently waiting for the dawn.

 

#SantaClausMemory #Christmas #ChildhoodPoetry

 

Christmas is WALnuts—

Walnuts for the fruitcake

Walnuts for the fudge

Walnuts for all the give-away

Eat-the-crumbs cookies

Walnuts for the date-rich candies

Sugared walnuts,

Snow-crusted, sweet…

And WALNUTS

Cracked, shelled and sorted,

Finely chopped or chunky,

Walnuts so nakedly delicious.

Then on Christmas morning

My own walnuts

To hoard

To crack by myself

For me

Just to eat

Mine

All mine

Snuggled in the toe

Of the stocking

Hung with so much care

The night before.

Christmas?

Oh,

Christmas is WALnuts!

At Christmas time, each year, to this house

came the Chestnut Girl,

Her pockets full of rich brown nuts

…a once-a-year treasure…

to give away, to share.

 

Now Christmas has come again,

the time of chestnuts,

sweet and rare.

But the Chestnut Girl

will not come this year, to this house.

For the one who understood—

the gift,

the giver

and the joy

that special one has gone.

 

Yet lingering on the crisped winter air,

the image remains:

the Chestnut Girl

with her pockets full of nuts

…the once-a-year treasure…

to give away—to share….

 

#Friendship #Christmas #ChristmasTreats #ChestnutsandPoetry