The Poetry Marathon

The mystery of the time at night when guided by jars of firefly light.

As steam rose from the lake in the moonbeams like fog, the crickets harmonized with the baritone frog.

Laughter of children filled the evening air, as they played a rousing round of Truth or Dare.

I sat silently near the shore on a boat, wrapped in memories and an old raincoat.

The children worked and tilled the soil,

they had to do the work and toil,

they did the jobs and got the pay.

It wouldn’t always be that way.

Upon their eighteenth year on earth,

they had earned what they were worth.

It was then that they retired,

some other child would then be hired.

The adults they then were left to play,

do as they wished with friends all day.

When babies came the children got,

to teach them things that they’d been taught.

The adults drank cocktails by the pool,

there was no time for going to school.

The kids made sure their folks were fed,

never grumbled about going to bed.

After this single switch occurred,

little grumbling was ever heard.

The grown-ups knew they had it good,

the kids knew someday soon they would.

The previous rules had all been wrong,

keeping adults at work too long,

while they had longed to simply be

able to be wild and free.

The choice had come to try to see,

if all the youthful energy,

could help the world efficiently run,

while preserving most of life for fun.

After just one generation,

there was a real United Nation,

nobody cared or really knew about the “Great Switcheroo”,

It simply was the way things are.

Peace on earth had come that far!

Tiny, sickly litter runt.

Brown, black, white.

Beagle.

Puppy in a kitten collar.

Tail, lacking control, motions aimlessly.

Loved back to health by her people.

Tree climber, couch companion, bed mate.

Camilla Barker Howls or Millie,

little sister of Lily.

An adored princess.

Petite, silky, energetic, silly.

Wood pile prancer, squirrel chaser, yard surveyor.

Sunny spot napper.

Clean up committee.

Escape artist.

Complicated life with self imposed rules.

Under foot, on lap, head out window ear blowing antics.

Empty Nester solace.

Twelve years old.

I want more chapters in this dog story.

I could not hear what they heard,

nor could I see what they saw.

How I longed to understand what made their feet tap and their faces smile.

I felt like an outsider for the first time.

I am not deaf, I can see, yet hardly what I’d came for.

Here I stood on the sidewalk outside the pub,

my ID securely at home in the jacket I wore last night.

We were just a couple of kids.

We spoke of the holidays with our dysfunctional families.

We didn’t have the vocabulary to describe an aura.

Yet we identified the colors of each family gathering.

While our situations were different, our color palate was the same.

Born with a natural ability to turn an ordinary day into a sticky situation.

Making no apologies for simply doing a job, feeding her family, making a living in the family business.

A taste for finer things exceeded only by a drive to go after what she wanted.

Never loved, rarely respected, never hearing praise for her fine meticulous labor.

Often it seemed her work was ignored by others or simply brushed away with a dismissive hand.

Yet she endured and each time she began anew, she anticipated that her next project would be even greater.

It seems it takes events for friends to gather.

Though it is during the mundane days between we wish we saw more of ye.

The weddings and funerals that draw us near, making us think of those dear when we smell the hint of rosebuds.

Our intentions are sincere but our lack of effort keeps us apart for a great while.

So many memories of time gone by and still more I wish to make with ye.

I propose a promise that we choose to make our shared time a reality, if I may.

It was the seed,

in the flower bed,

that burst and let the small leaves spread,

it grew a stalk, from the earth where it fed,

when the sun came out, it raised it’s head.

She collected people like others collected shells or sea glass. Finding them, often washed up, in places where others didn’t even see them. Like hunters of agates, she’d reach into a grouping and snatch those she found beautiful or interesting, ignoring others nearby.

Her  hair was like a barnyard, chunks of hay strewn to one side, some rusty object projecting out of an overgrown thatch. It looked right and peaceful, though it was a look unique to that one location and one that could not and should not be be duplicated elsewhere.

A sleek hotel lobby best describes her appearance; smooth marble, velvet finishes and something about her reflected light like crystal chandeliers shining off oversized mirrors. There was a mystery to her, like an escalator heading to another floor, an elevator door that might open and reveal something.

Both ordinary and complicated are the words that best define her.

The hallways smelled of whatever her neighbors were cooking. Sauteed onions, roasting beef, frying chicken.

Her own apartment was neat, orderly and filled with treasures; a blown glass grand piano, oil paintings by her mother, small shelves filled with items gathered in her world travels.

The couch material was green, itchy and hot, I much preferred one of the rocking chairs; a delicate cream upholstered one with dark wood, a larger one that sat beside it that had once been leather, then a satin stripe and now sits beside my own fire place in a blue fabric I chose when preparing it for my nursery a quarter century ago.

The kitchen had a table with space for two, a paper napkin that she used for weeks as a time was folded precisely and lay atop the radio. Her coffee percolator and canisters were clear class. She could create magic with the small efficient gas stove.

The bedroom housed a set of furniture from another era, on her dresser was a small framed photo of my father as a child.

I would never know my grandmother but it was her sister who never married and lived in the apartment adjacent to my own yard as a child where I felt the way my friends felt about their own grandmas.