24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Dearest Nana,
My Chateau is warm today
With the shining summer sun
Just in time
For The Poetry Month!
So I write to you this letter
To introduce
Epistolary Poetry
And ask if you will
Write back to me too!
And also to say that
I miss you and
To take a bow to the poetry
You taught me too!
Love,
Your Little Girl
Parade of poets penning an
Occasion of feelings that
Emerge as a fountain,
Treating the mystical words,
Relishing the values that
Yearn towards a faculty which
Manifest the surrounding and
Accolades as fruits, ripen
Round the clock
Actively castling ideas
Through the voices that
Hear and echo silently,
Overflowing the minds like a
New dawn every hour.
There they are again, bearing flowers
setting up beneath my window
asking for me to play
when whimsy will not move me
busy climbing my own mountain
and looking for something farther away
Where there is love, there is a road
The moment is too alive
it’s hot breath on my neck
and the air is thinner up here and
I am too dizzy with possibilities
to methodically entrap myself
In foolishness
Where there is love, there is a road
For now, catalog your regrets
find some salve for your soul
I will be working in the night
when my voice is strong
when we can be daring together
maybe then, we can birth new fire
Where there is love, there is a road
It’s been a decade since I’ve last heard the mystery of faith.
How I knew the kindness of true religion, words of wisdom
passed down from a man that knew God as a father, a friend,
whose voice was stronger still even when cancer tried to cut it short.
Father, Padre, forgive me of my sins, for which you may see,
and if there were ever angels, you graced the earth as one of them,
your wings the parish, all-encompassing. The definition of compassionate,
you loved us all. There is nothing I wouldn’t give
for one more slow Sunday, suspended by your liturgy,
but bless me now with something holier, an old memory,
haunted with the ghost of incense, and the words
to lift my soul to believe once more.
To Father Larry, a man of Spirit
Hour 1
For Vicki Kelly, Anishinaabe/Metis scholar and my dear teacher and friend:
Vicki
she sat across the table from me in silence until her mouth opened from the centre of the centre to release words I only dreamed to hear:
Go back to the teachings of your Ancestors
never doubting I knew who I was allowed me to be who I knew I was beyond the 23’n me shackles science to know the certainty of
my heart’s knowing –
Where my blood and marrow knows the songs of my people
even if my throat does not
yet.
She taught me to sing my songs from the spirit she coaxed forward out of shadow
with kindness
patience
and humility
reserved for our wisest Elders.
Now I take shaky, tentative,
Tender-footed, baby steps toward my Ancestors
From the loving words of the one who speaks from the centre.
© r. l. elke
On the small-screen a younger hero,
saves the dowager from distress and dereliction.
How unwedded is reality from fiction,
poor decision, unspoken requests, misunderstood, misinterpretations.
And a wasting of opportunities to be that hero, as you wasted and bed-sored, broke bones and were abhorred.
A family that cannot care, is doomed to despair.
Dear regret, there is no peace for the damned. I know you are aware…
fathered in mystery
born from a need
a want
a hunger
to create
develop
an idea
from an enigma
crack the egg
nurture and nudge
until it lays full born
in it aerie
a fledgling in its nest
ready to fly into the world
then left to lay
unseen
forgotten
as if stillborn
undead
lain in a casket
waiting
waiting
It’s been a long time
A decade at least
We failed our friendship
Again
I think about you, wonder
But always cautiously
Never willing to reach out
Never able to forgive
Our path together was always divergent
Always caught up in egos and prejudices
I know I can never trust you
Never believe in you
I wonder if our paths will converge again
If I will be ignorant enough
To fall under your spell
What I crave can kill me
What I hate can keep me strong
Our karma too thick
Too murky
Too dangerous
I keep you far away
To keep my heart safe,
My life calm.
You my greatest foe
My soulmate of sorrow
My constant refrain of decay
Wasted, crumbling
Deterioration
So much we could have done
It’s a wonder we survived
Dear Granmom,
You had seven children, my mom was the last
And many foster children came through.
You were of hardy German stock, the clans rock
Without you, what would they do?
When I was born we lived with you
My mother and my own little self
You gave me love and soft cuddles
Never putting that love on a shelf.
When I was three, we moved from thee
Way down south in Alabama
My mother, father, sister and I
Had to leave behind my much loved gramma.
The years they passed and the time finally came
On the day that I turned seven.
We had to lay you to rest, broken hearted,
You gained your wings and went to Heaven.
Time has flown and I never forgot
How you visited me after you were gone.
Moving the Bible you gave me,
In which you signed to “My little one.”
Love,
Your granddaughter
It feels like yesterday we spent so much time together.
The laughter was easy and filled entire afternoon.
I am not sure why you left or where you went.
You just seemed to disappear slowly and then, were gone.
Without you, I am surrounded by a garrulous cloud of voices;
tumultuous noise of doubts and fears.
I relish the times you pop in, brief respites of joy.
I miss the person I was when you were here.