24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Ring a bell and someone comes
Push a button to invite a hello
How are you? they ask
Doorways large accommodate
All those collected years
Rolling into the shower
Puzzles abound on card tables
Holidays are happily posted
Birthdays are announced
Ladies flirt with cookies
While men account the wars
Grandchildren visit Saturdays
A fortunate soul will not wake
Sliding away without assistance
Now watching the others prepare
To count blessings really matter
From good to become better
We know the worth after a loss
So should act like a floss
To keep togetherness so clean
Even our parting should not mean
That’s why I never think of deprivation
Be ourselves for any fixation
I’m being followed by a shadow of myself
(embrace your shadow self, all the self help books decry)
Can I sew my shadow self back on
with a needle and thread?
That’s what Wendy did to Peter Pan.
When all my illusions and delusions fade away
What is left?
Bereft of fantasy,
the bare bones of truth
illuminate
reality.
Sanctity.
Serenity.
A lethargy of strange forced us to
take refuge at our cottage that summer.
We hoped that once we passed the treeline
we would find safety; a reprieve
from the pandemic
that rocked our world.
The mask of fear we donned
for months and months
came off as optimism
prevailed. But the longer
we were isolated in the
protective forest; amidst
cedars, pines and fiddlehead ferns –
in the sounds of downy woodpeckers
knocking at our door, hoots from
the boreal owl, and the piping of
bald eagles – the less we wanted
to return to civilization.
Fairy lights we bought en route, made
a firefly bottle we hung from two large trees
under which we placed our wooden chairs,
making a comfortable reading nest
as August turned to September. With a
resurgence on the verge, we stayed put, knowing
winter would be hard. But our resolve was
harder still and we found life, renewed. In
the forests of our temporary home, we made
our future – a future unplugged, unfettered,
our lungs full of mountain air
and easy freedom.
These journeys we take, together, apart,
voyages in time, in the spatio-temporal vastness of possibilities,
The return is always sweet.
From the morning that broke, like the first morning,
you are still afar; and out of synchronicity.
And I still wheedle and wheel,
a droning beetle out of sight.
Breonna.
Shot without a case, a human disgrace.
How can you say this wasn’t about race?
Her body cannot be replaced.
Breonna.
A mother’s screams fall on deaf ears, as the sirens turn into nightmares.
Crucified because her skin wasn’t fair or because you didn’t see white in the middle of the night?
Breonna.
Damn. The story doesn’t change she was asleep in her bed before ya’ll shot her dead.
A vibrant young black woman trying to make a difference in this world.
She probably gave CPR to several white girls.
An awarded EMT who gave life to others but that doesn’t matter when all you see is color.
Breonna.
My heart breaks daily for your mother and for those who loved you like no other.
Your dreams were taken, and I don’t want to know why.
I want to see those who fired bullets into your flesh behind bars for the rest of their lives.
I want your memory to stay alive and I want your spirit to thrive.
Breonna.
Blessed to have the ears
to capture moonlight voices
and delicate strokes of a guitar.
Fortunate, beyond measure,
to have the mind ready to draw pictures
of words sung into eternity.
Proud, of my sensitive self
tied up in childhood memories
of the Creative spirit.
Blissful in knowing,
that perhaps music will never be so good again,
but the art of film was invented just in time.
If I ever lost my ears,
at least I have heard the deep tunes
of a spirited man.
If I ever lost imagination,
at least I have known lyrics
made to turn the ordinary, sublime.
If I ever lose my youth,
then there will be no worry,
graceful age will make the sunrise all the more beautiful.
Beth A. Fleisher
Hour 9
Prompt 9: Write a poem containing at least five of the following ten words. If you want it can include all ten words. If this prompt seems at all familiar, it is probably because we do it every year, just with different words. XFirefly. XBottle. XMask. XPorridge. XZoom. XLethargy. XTreeline. XHeat. XStrange. XCottage
Strange Firefly
Pandemic, Day 146
I’ve been at my Grandmother’s cottage
since Day 1. What started as a weekend visit
has become a trudge of endless days.
At least I don’t have to worry about wearing
a mask here, like I see all my friends doing on Zoom.
Grandma Jeannie lives by herself on a small
private island off the coast of Washington state.
Her A-frame cottage stands in a small, natural meadow,
surrounded by a treeline of old growth Douglas fir.
Contact with the outside world is limited to
the red dinghy that arrives the first week
of every month with her supplies.
I normally love being here, but today, lethargy
overtook my normal good spirits.
Surprising, because it was Supply Day,
and Grandma had ordered two giant pizzas
from town, one Classic Pepperoni,
the other, a Meat Lovers Special, both my faves.
But to me, it might as well have been
tasteless porridge.
After trying to get me to eat, with no success,
even Grandma Jeannie was done with
my “lazy yellow dog” attitude.
“Here,” she said, handing me a large glass bottle
with a pointed top, “Go catch some fireflies.”
I looked into her snappy brown eyes.
She didn’t look crazy, but who knew?
She held the bottle out to me, shaking it insistently,
and I reluctantly took it. And almost dropped it
because of the heat radiating from the glass to my fingers.
Whoa, what the..?
After a second, the heat diminished to a comforting
warmth, and I went outside.
I knew what fireflies were and what they looked like.
Hadn’t I been coming here my whole life? But I’d never
tried to actually catch any until tonight. When we were kids,
my brother Bob did that, but not me. I thought it was dumb.
I sighed deeply. I knew Grandma Jeannie well enough to know
I couldn’t go back until I had caught at least one firefly.
There were dozens dancing through the air, blinking on and off,
putting on quite a light show. Should be easy, I thought.
Then I saw this one totally strange firefly. And I mean strange!
It was probably three times bigger than any of the others,
and it separated from the bunch? Flock? Whatever… and
flew right up to me. It lit on the very top of the bottle,
bright green light flashing on and off, wings folded.
Why hadn’t I taken the top off the bottle?
The strange, green firefly looked at me … winked, and smiled.
That’s when I knew that life was about to get
much more interesting at Grandma Jeannie’s cottage.
peek-a-boo
via video chat
born during a plague year
she hides her face
by snuggling into her mother
The sweet cottage snuggled deep
in a lethargic treeline, strange as it sounds.
The smoke from the chimney curled lazily in the evening sky.
The fireflies not yet visible slept deep in the wildflower
clumps just waiting to zoom about in the dark night
but now they slumbered, unaware of the hot porridge
made, the bottle of sweet syrup close by, the stocking feet
resting on a knotted rag rug, made from the masks
of Covid-19.