The Poetry Marathon

Connection

Will I be content to stay this way?
Or will I take the difficult path to connect?
With you, unperfectly perfect for me
Let’s commit together

Or will I take the difficult path to connect?
It is always tempting to remain an island
Let’s commit together
For we can offer ourselves as one

It is always tempting to remain an island
An island of selfishness and fear
For we can offer ourselves as one
One of the many, but one of our hope

An island of selfishness and fear
We can sail with our connection
One of the many, but one of our hope
After forty years, I am sure

We can sail with our connection
With you, unperfectly perfect for me
After forty years, I am sure
to be content to stay this way for more

Prompt 4

What will fill this need?

To the voices heed?

Commune

Plant in love the seed

Growing at great speed

Festoon

Spirit at last freed

Climbing up to feed

Blue Moon

I have been meaning to write a poem using the lai form, so I gave it a try using this photo as she climbs the ladder to this week’s blue moon.

Our journey on this sphere is limited in
time. Cliché, yes, but true. I think so much about life
and its ending now that I
am old enough for a senior discount. Some say–
“I won’t write to her, let
our sister be alone. She made her choices,” but me,
I can’t. I’ll keep reaching out and come
to the end, hopefully more healed and closer.
What happens in those in-between odd and even
years that breaks relationships? if
we knew would we fix it?
It is bitterness and hatred that kills
not forgiveness and love, which I choose for me

My striking line came from “Divergence” by Diana Khoi Nguyen
“In life I say let me come closer even if it kills me”

Hello, everyone. I’ll be writing poems from southern California this year. Looking forward to it and creating with you.

Home is becoming unstuck
When we get to be awestruck
Sweet-hope home is through the door
Not a place, love we adore

My journey began and ended with a tanaga. I wrote 28 poems, with a detour when I inadvertently cheated by posting a few poems before I took a nap. I rewrote them, so I could say I did it properly. It was a great experience! I’ll look forward to reading more poems over the next few days.

Blessings for these things:
the prayers you prayed for me,
the Mad Magazines you bought us,
the freedom to explore anywhere,
the macaroni and cheese, please, that
had a pound of cheese any kind
a stick of butter
2 cups of bread crumbs
4 cups of milk
a dribble of oil and some flour
a mess thrown into the oven
a push toward early cardiac death,
but we drown in the cheesy goodness.

Inspired by cheese and Jay Parini’s “Blessings”

Wake Up

the visible becomes light
Awake, O sleeper,
Arise from the dead
and Christ will shine on you.”

Wake yourself,
you who have drunk from
the hand of the LORD
the bowl
the cup of staggering.

Awake, awake,
put on your strength
for no more shall come in the unclean

Arise, your light has come,
and the glory of the LORD
the sun of righteousness
has risen upon you.
with healing in its wings.

Wake from sleep.
For salvation is nearer to us now
than when we first believed.

A found poem based on these Bible verses: Ephesians 5:14; Isaiah 51:17; Isaiah 52:1; Isaiah 60:1; Malachi 4:2; and Romans 13:11.

My spice cabinet, filled to the brim with sweet and savory magic, you are a wonder.

The grinder and you have taught me to make my own masalas–chai, garam, Arab and Chinese five-spice. You open doors of the possible and make my cooking soar to summits I never knew possible.

You give me confidence to measure by the spoonful. Not the wimpy sprinkling of my past cooking life, the bland life I had before I came to know you.

Occasionally one of your mismatched recycled jars escapes when nudged too far. If it’s plastic it will bounce delighted across the floor; if glass, it goes out with gusto and flair–filling the kitchen with aromatic joy for a day or two.

Thank you, spice cabinet, for filling my world with color, aroma, flavor, and beauty.

Wow, be sure to read this beautiful Ode to Shea Butter by Angel Nafis. 

I wrote about walking during the day, as it now noon here.

Outside

It’s an oven outside
The air mostly just hot, still,
what you might expect
at noon near the summer
solstice on a desert island.
Onions are frying in ghee
for someone’s lunch,
making my mouth water.
Oleander, nature’s poison,
I have never understood why
they are ubiquitous landscaping
for family gardens.

Shade was not to be found,
I wanted to sit and observe nature.
I kept walking and went to school
to pick up a letter of recommendation
our departing principal had readied for me.
I sat outside, enjoying some welcome
shade–the first I had seen.
I read the letter, along with a lot of
Denise’s there was also one Angela tucked in,
a stray from a previous letter, cut and pasted.
I returned it to the secretary. She’ll get it fixed.

The birds seemed to be enjoying the shade
of the jasmine tree and delighting in the promise
of the fruit-laden palms.