Tag Archives: creative writing

A noisy door helps me write (a villanelle)

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Opening wooden doors that creak, something went awry.
A spatial sense of order, withdrawn in disarray.
Shutting closed I pass on through, the other side blue sky.

On ladders and embankments, I reach or try to climb.
The pieces always ticking while the motions are in play
Opening wooden doors that creak, something went awry.

Tip-toeing down older roads, hopping over grime,
Slipping over some misstep, it’s difficult to convey. Shutting closed I pass on through, the other side blue sky.

Crafting paths on tile and gravel out of sticks and rhyme.
None are quiet, some are speaking loudly in the fray. Opened creaking, wooden doors. Something went awry.

Careful with the word choice. It happens all the time.
The only advantage in supercilious display
closing shut. I pass the other blue side, the sky.

All this confusion while I wander in my mind.
Noises in their speaking voice carry me away.
I opened wooden doors and something creaking went awry.
I shut the door and pass on others, through to bluer skies.

Diversity

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A billion snowflakes fallen down; the sky’s pale light sings them aground.

A population filled with wist over winter’s grey-ness, quiet bliss.

Each one designed of fractal flair; together in surrounding air

covering grass and plants and trees

woven in a blanket freeze.

In silence of a winter sleep

until the sun and tulips peep.

Then drips of water feed the ground and life returns in sights and sound.

And something made so singular moves in tandem in the world.

Solitary beauty at its birth –

flowing through to share its worth.

And so in moments cold, dispersed- all in beauty shown diverse

leads to something else, embrace it differently someplace.

Tarantella

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Something that whipped in the wind brought me out in it,

crackling across as a swirl in the night.

Stepping and rattling the tambourine rhythm in

arguments fostered in melodious spite.

Here we are dancing an old tarantella

upping the stakes in each course or turn.

The constant accelerate twirling and gaiting

until we are much to invested to adjourn.

The tune that accompanies us in our effort

accelerandos to meet our estate.

Constantly raising the tensed dance hysteria

and we are now breathless and tired of debate.

Wouldn’t a tango be more aptly suited?

Or maybe a waltz or a foxtrot to try?

The steps, they are beautiful, motions in tandem.

No one is upstaged and nothing goes awry.

Here as I ponder the dance steps of politics,

tightening my tambourine skin here and there.

Adding a jingle to increase the rattle

in this tarantella, poetic warfare.

Scratching Frost

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Ahead of my steps in linear course, 
the shovel scritches back and forth
- a sound that scatters with the snow 
and bits of debris ground below.

As I amble across the drive
the scratching noise itself derives.
A haul gets tossed to the edge,
bits fall wayside, marking a ledge.

This song in concert with my walk
could not be heard with snowplow squawk-
rumbling in the cold grey air
tossing snow, making bare

the concrete surface on which I stand.
The scraping by a shovel in hand,
the detail frost and snow aligned,
showing what I've left behind.

And as the chore has come to close
I look back at the path I chose.
Leaning on the shovel there,
snow still falling everywhere.

The best way out is always through – Robert Frost

Perception

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You ask me to think about paint colors,
and the soft gray you’ve chosen.
The hue of it is blue, but it reflects
a green during midday, when the sun is highest.

Blue is a color that knows no season, and paints the infinite sky

while green implies the growth of things – dotting where the eye sees.

Grey, itself – like clouds obscure the sky or fog obfuscates the landscape.

Such a color – gray/grey – spelled two ways yet has a continuum of sound transitioning between “a” and “e”

– in both, the sum is intermediate.

I slow down the diphthong
and try to catch the tones between the chromatic versions.
I voice this change in sound color aloud, with the intention
to consider them without interference.
You give me a sideways glance
and say, ”No, I meant, how do they look?”

******

A poem originally written in 2015 during NaPoWriMo, dusted off and reworked here.

Seasons

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Standing next to the brick wall to gain a view on an edge,
I see seedlings of a future beginning to assert their presence in a distant hedge.
A clutch of vines hold firm to their path in runners along the wall.
Green patches vie in the foreground, soon to fill the emptiness with crawl.
It all fosters a belief in rebirth. Yet that requires a conviction in the death of things in every place
when what happens is metamorphosis on a pace approaching eye level.
I see a world that sleeps, then grows to the horizon.
In ten years or so, this garden will all be changed and enlightened
from point-to-point, the severity of existence rearranged.
The florets, grasses, leaves, and life with its meandering display,
just as the vine that climbs the wall wrestles with the moment,
the energy of infinity wins out as nature foments.

*Photograph taken by me in March 2019 at the Gardens of Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Ireland.

There’s always one more

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In the still life of a stand of flowers, beauty only lasts as petals are reaching their horizon. In a second, they fall and fade from memory.

I pick just one in that moment.  On another day it will grow elsewhere, the memory of the first a propagation of seed and light.

In the waning moments of a day, there is a gasp of light before the darkness draws down the shade.

There are many more specks after it fades. A memory in one more snapshot.

Getting to know the sky requires the memory of space, the distance between and among the stars.  Finding one and remembering where it is.

But if you misplace it, no matter,  there’s always one more.  

Anxiety

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I worked in the garden today, removing the troublesome weeds.
The apprehension of a thistle, dug deep with a trowel,
broad leaves and thorns that won’t concede.

I dug through the garden today, pulling up my anxiety.
The crabgrass and chickweed spread in the clover,
rooted deep with angst and unease.

I weeded the garden today, prying the nightshade free.
My concerns over nettle and henbit and dock
disquieted my plain revery.

I cleared out the garden today, the soil freshly turned to see
the divots and pockets where once were the nutsedge
now awaiting new flowers and seed.

Astigmatism

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I take my glasses off, polish them in the tail of my shirt,
hoping to clear what confounds and conceals.
A bit more vision, a little less dirt
might give my field of view a broader appeal.

Yet, leaders’ actions are smudged – 
their intentions are keen.
Religion’s bright faces are blurred or unclean
and creation’s bright mornings revel unjudged.

The devilish details are hidden from view,
the rhyming and reason seem random and slant.
Perhaps my prescription is old, needs renewed;
I can’t glean the matter between Hume or Kant.

I polish the lenses, each hot breath I wipe,
viewing the world with horizons in fog.
The boundaries less of a contrast in stripes;
this poem, just maybe, a means to unclog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In kind

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We were asked some time ago
to cover our ears and let it go.
As sounds of untruths filled the air
boasting promise (false), laid bare.
Asking us to ignore it all
to hear no evil was the call.

Then one day, we’re cautioned: wise
to keep our distance so no one dies,
to simply cover our mouths to spare.
We close salons and bars, daycare
so those at risk among us most
won’t pay excessive, deadly costs.

And whilst we’re dealt pandemic blows,
mankind’s poor character flaws disclose
an image in the mirror mulled.
Never spoken, but we’ve culled
an awful sinful, biased slant
that fills a cup we won’t decant.

And here we are today with this:
in basic calls we are remiss.
Simple facts to call out lies
and to hold account the ones who try.
To care enough to save the weak
and act on what our family speaks.

No politics that I can name
outweighs this simple, common claim:
mere decency should be our aim.