The Poetry Marathon

A Response to Bed in Summer

(By Robert Louis Stevenson, from  Child’s Garden of Verse)

As a child I saw your words,

Things fell into place.

You spoke as a child to a child,

And I heard

The mystery of the earth turning its seasons

And the injustice of infancy

Your words sat in me

Seeds that took root, that eternally grow

Dear Old Age,

You scare me

You’re the only thing that truly does

Death isn’t the problem

It’s the slow decline on the way there

It’s the decay

The disappointment

The endless letting go

so much work

Dear Jesus,

I suspect you’ve been reborn, a lot

That you come here all the time

We’re just too dumb to notice

Dandelions

As a kid, I didn’t care that dandelions were weeds

Pick them all!

Crushed stems filled fat little hands

Till little hands were bitter with milky sap

And when they had gone to seed

Their bobbing over sized heads

White and tufted

It took so many breaths

To send those weed seeds drifting

Maybe

I always thought we’d finish this road together

But as the years turn

More certainties become maybes

Your ring is melting on the horizon

A tear drop of molten gold

You say it’s time to part ways

You grow apart like the branches of a bough

Maybe this was always in the DNA of the tree

Maybe we could have read it in the leaves

Or in the way the hawk screech scrapes the sky

Maybe from his circle he sees how it will pan out

If you’re happier, then I suppose there are other paths

If you’re lonely, then I suppose there are other types of together

And if you’re leaving, maybe there are other destinations 

They just are not ours anymore

The Beginning

Beautiful before beauty

destroyer and creator

Out of the vacuum

Out of the oscillations

Out of the vibrations

we were born

hot with no observer

from the silent, bubbling crucible

“The Land knows you, even when you are lost”

Does my homeland know me?

Child of the Gael

In my tattered, fading cloak, fatigued

Without the language the land gave us

Does the grass recognize me

as one of its own?

A child uprooted

From the sycamore and the chestnut

From the willow and the linden

From the long, deep alleys of  winters

From the brick, the slate, and the chimney

The land of my home knows me

A child of the Gael

In my tattered, fading cloak, fatigued

Without the language the land gave us

The grass recognizes me

as one of its own

Sciamachy

Dream them up

Shadows upon the surface of the mind

Make them all, invite them in

Preoccupied with omens, prophets

Remnants of old memories, demons

Make them to drink them, invite them to fight them

Companions

Follow them, they follow you

Watch them, they watch you

Because a shadow is also a reflection

And a shadow is also an absence

You fill it to fight it, but you cannot win

Where is Anne Boleyn’s Head?

Traitors

Displayed on spikes

A warning to others

Heads on spikes

Anne’s head

Ladies covered over it as soon as it had fallen

Carried away lifted removed and wrapped

In a chest here ready

Laid to rest beneath the chancel

There they remained

A skeleton small

Beneath the chapel floor

Dear Rose, age 18

It won’t be as much fun as you think.

I could explain, but you won’t believe me.

                       – Your Future Self

Selkie

He stole my skin, my face

Don’t romanticize my situation

He has my soul

On a shelf

In a dry corner of the house

Let me go back to the sea’s hush

To the cool blanket of fog

Under a dock

At dawn

He swears his love is

Concrete

But I am damn raw

On a moonbeam clock

I count the nights until

I kill him for the key