The Poetry Marathon

Perhaps ‘love letter’ is a bit too strong-

a letter of admiration, perhaps?

An isolation song to hum to,

floating alone in your little time capsule,

waiting for a channel change.

How’s the view? Does the dust swirl,

long-dead lava tubes echoing sussurations

of your breathing in the thinnest stratosphere?

Do you look back and think it was worth it?

At the footprints in moon dust, like Crusoe,

admiring the anthropology of it all, the need to look further.

Do you look at Mars in envy, a low red neighbor,

and think that I could be there, waving at you?

Man of the moon, do you ever dream,

was there a time life could have thrived around you,

does the thin oxygen pop in your brain

and do you dream of green, and blue, and grey?

Man in the moon, I am sailing soon,

on a ship of forged stardust and human hope,

I am sailing soon to reach you,

to breathe as you do, and wave to an earth that waits

for our landing once again.

Cocooned in coral, long fins glitter and gleam.

Cool, sweet oxygen filters, and I breathe deep

the dark, fathomless waves above.

Lights sweep above, too bright, flashing,

and the metal beast descends.

Brood-mother tells me they are humans,

like us, but land-dwellers. They do not understand

the singing stars and the pulse of the moon,

they sink and search, but for what?

Their ghosts linger everywhere now, and I swim on,

though every now and then a bright light pierces close, and I dart,

letting them catch a glint of my tail before I flee,

alone. Soon, the ocean will be mapped, and I will be the last.

Do you know a mother’s love?

You’re old enough, now, to know it for yourself;

I once shared your mother with you.

Some say animals don’t love as people do,

it’s sometimes true, but I loved you

far beyond when my kittens were grown and gone,

when you were three I draped in your lap, purring

even as knobby knees pushed my ribs,

and grubby hands grabbed. I loved you,

as love from a mother can only be;

without boundaries or limits, or species,

without expectation of reciprocation,

knowing my short life would never match yours.

I would never live to see you fully grown,

a kitten of your own, but sometimes, sometimes,

a mother’s love pulls me back from that rainbow bridge

and I love you only as a mother can, unseen, unfelt

but purring all the same.

You can’t crawl back into a moment in time. You can’t slip into it,

easy, like a hand through a glove. I can’t go back in time, drifting,

sliding into memory, but I try. It’s fuzzy on the edges, but if I focus in,

tight, I can see your face, reflected in the wine glass on a windowsill.

Your mouth moves, but I can’t hear your voice anymore. A sunflower head

perches in it now, empty and dried out, the petals hanging limply

or shriveled on a hardback that I left to prop the window open for air.

I’m drowning in air and drying out too, and soon I’ll just sit,

withering away like that flower. Lost in space, wanting to pull back time

like a filmy curtain, and just see you there with me again.

But still, here I am, just waiting, and the time ticks on.

Silver flash in low light,

darting between trees in a dull roar,

faster, louder, a bright red gleam

as I perch on a high seat, speeding down

a dusty road, throttling a cool 50 miles per hour,

and I am a goddess of speed,

Artemis, Apollo, race me, it’s 1922

and I’m still vibrant with fear and grief

but full of life. No second war has worn me down,

the terror of that Great War is beneath poppy fields

and I’m streaking by, fleeing fear

and dressed in red, triumphant and terrified and mad

with the want to outrun everything once again.

I love this city.

Every time I walk the streets, there is a sound, a smell,

like a distant beast, purring, roaring, thrumming

wrapping me in its warmth, its slumbering

and as I stride, long-legged and though it’s an illusion

in this luminous moment, I am safe, warm, and free.

Standing still in woods alone,

long limbs shake and ears prick

hearing hoofbeats just beyond the woods.

A partial alarm is waiting

Heart pounding and quietly quaking

watching the man admiring the snow.

I turn and sprint to life, fleeting like wind,

dark against black, against Robert Frost’s

‘the deepest night’,

a lone deer flying deeper into the wood,

the wood still, and silently, filling with snow.

That first night back, I almost didn’t want to bathe.

Cold tile bit into the backs of my thighs, my back,

supporting as gentle rain showered down, warm,

soothing sounds pounding down as it swirled down the drain.

Too tired to move. Too tired to think.

Numbly wrapped up in a grey fog that lifted only a little while

and only that warm water could wash it away, the flow mimicking,

only for a little while, your warmth, your voice,

until it too swirled down the drain, and I’m left cold, naked, alone.

Home is a person, a place, a feeling.

A long trek back to the warm,

the familiar, the strong.

One day I’ll come home to arms

to hold, a voice to embrace.

And just once, just once I crave

the boring, the basic and simple.

Honey, I’m home, I’m home.

But until then it’s notes,

the last goodnight

and the first good morning,

a temporary stay until I’m that much closer

to where I belong.

I never thought I’d say this, but.

Please. For the love of god.

No more cheese fondue.