The Poetry Marathon

So great to be gearing up for my second Poetry Marathon. I am excited and a little anxious I must admit. Still I am waiting for that first poem that you type with trembling fingers and a heart beating wildly in your chest.

Let’s go poets and make this a great Poetry Marathon.

POEM 24

I have been a rolling stone for years now, traveling from state to state.

Six months here, perhaps a year  or two there.

Uprooted, unsuited left out of that steady flow of home.

If I didn’t have or make a desk wherever I was I would surely have died years ago.

I need that chair at that desk however makeshift, and that has brought me home.

My stories piled high on one corner and a window to see a Cardinal or a red bird swoop across the yard singing and calling.

My heart can rest when I sit and write, conversing with characters, researching, just looking up words.

I can sit in front of the screen typing, setting down words and phrases like puzzle pieces, for hours on end.

when my neck grows stiff and my legs feel bulbous, I walk about for a while cleaning my friends’ pool or painting a clients house.

Then the  iron grows hot again and I must strike.

One day I’ll settle in my own home at my own desk, but until I receive such a blessing, I will make a desk wherever I am.

I will confront my protagonists and watch them dance onto the page and take a bow.

POEM 23

Oh to join the waltz of fireflies dancing through the night.

Rhythmic points of green fire, what a joyous sight.

Thousands flicker endlessly in bioluminescent flight.

They blink and glide, setting a forest aglow.

So many little strobe lamps you know, flitting in the dark of the woods giving a giant light show.

Lightning bugs froze in a camera’s quick snap of bright, are suddenly green baubles like strings of lime colored lights.

Ah but I much prefer them naturally–blinking–flashing–firing as they might.

POEM 22

It’s five am and the birds have started to tweet and call.

Sing softer little Red bird; the sun is still enroute and I am still sleepless.

I succumbed to a moment of stillness dropping my glasses and my phone.

Ahh but the end is drawing nigh! This has been a test of time.

I won’t claim the victory yet, though I can see its crowned head.

I can feel that certain rhythm taking shape as I go.

My thoughts had become slow but are now picking up the pace.

My keyboard is suddenly foreign under my touch but I venture on.

Zukey is snoring on the bed behind me and it is music.

Every snort and hiccup I envy that sweet pup.

Let us make plans to dance and join the Cardinal’s song.

With the sunrise still burning its way up the Eastern edge of the sky.

Let us claim victory for the day, for conquering the night.

POEM 21

Wheat, wheat an ancient grain. Its knobby head is valued like gold.

Grind it smooth for flour or course for the bowl.

Its color is earthen, its aroma like dust from the plain.

In biblical days it was revered, plucked and stored as food for the gods

Give wheat the respect it is due. How low it has fallen from a certain grace.

Allergies spring from its crowned heads. Its stalks and stems once savored with no fear.

The touch of man can be fatal and destructive to his own rescuer.

We have rendered many things useless with our tampering and wheat has become our casualty.

It’s everywhere in divers foods, thickening, shoring up and tearing down.

That ancient golden grain reduced to an additive, stripped of it’s piety.

POEM 20

Pulling my sweater closer as I round the trail around Sherwood Mall on an unusually frigid, June night.

The sky is deep purple with a slice of silver moon. The constellations are pinpoints decorating the night.

My footfalls echo into the distance and the chill in the air deepens.

A cluster of fireflies in the grassy growth on the path’s edge, flitter and blink with cool green light.

So many sounds around me, crickets chirp, cicadas scream then go silent as I pass under the trees

bullfrogs croak from the shallow ditch. Zukey my faithful Schnoodle trots at my side.

The jingle from his tags filling any space left for sounds in the night.

The mall is closed but the stores are faintly lit giving the darkness a fringe of safety.

I love this time of the evening, as the world settles and breathes softer like a baby  put down for the night.

The darkness is like a void around me as I bid it goodnight.

POEM 19

The beach where they stand is not holy ground but it’s close enough.

Orange sand matches these great rock gods by the sea.

Water is  powerful yet it has not worn them down in a million years

They control the clouds twirling over their heads.

They are shrouded in a spritzing mist. It obscures them sometimes.

Great and granite boulders jutting from the shallow edge of the sea.

They sing softly like whales or did I imagine that they do?

Miles wide and God only knows how deep they sink into the sea floor.

I think brave boys used to dive from the ones farther off the shore.

They are Guardians and protectors with their striated sides marking their time

on earth, showing their age. Ancient and true does not tell the compete story.

They hold secrets and stories from eons ago.

POEM 18

On the night I arrived in great need of rest, wanting to shed the weight of my skin. I had been carrying the picture of this room around in my pocket. I could sleep for a week here.

Although comfort is cold in this blinding bright space?

Its shiny whiteness could have its light doused, diminished some.

But still, I could do a drunken waltz on the hardwood floors and inebriated with fatigue, ball up like a cat in the mommasan chair.

I brought a thick downy blanket, but no curtains for the bare, frameless windows bringing in the night.

The walls in this room are like pools of milk and so is the bed. Me too tired to swim–I might drown here.

POEM 17

Night falls and the sky is stygian, until stars appear like pin holes of light.

The chartreuse shrouded moon makes me homesick for some low lit room.

The shrill call of locusts fills the night like a siren. I grasp the darkness and shake it for fireflies.

Sleep is evasive and the deck beckons me. Peer upward it urges. Crickets fall silent and traffic sounds fill the void, muddying the summer ambience.

I try to reach up and grab a hunk of night, before clouds gathering in the west spread, blinding the moon and shutting off the stars . As I skirt the edge of midnight  waiting for storms to arrive in the declining hours of the morning, grumbling and flashing intermittent  lightning ,like furtive glances, I can’t manage a yawn.

I won’t begrudge it the sweeping downpour that washes the world. I’ll find comfort in the darkness, I’ll find joy in all the rain.

POEM 16

My search for an apple, an orange and Peach colored roses still intact, proved futile, stealing an hour. I did find a perfect tangerine though, still attached to a piece of

vine, the Leaves still vivid green and waxy with life. I found  an over ripe pear, sweet pale yellow that will have to suffice. I’ll sit them there next to the Golden Mimosa

in that little Square glass jar. I love the little warped wooden plate I found. It looks so much Like an artist’s palette, absent of the thumb hole.

I thought of painting but worried, so I pondered using water colors or maybe grease paints, just to waste more time.

Capturing  that frizzy Mimosa will surely strain my talent. Those golden puffs of fragrance would not be  an easy task, but this searching has ruled my day and thwarted

my craft. This image is  surely welcome to smell and to sight, sitting, waiting, mocking me, daring me to start.