24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Congratulations are in order!
You have survived deep cuts
whose scars will never disappear
You came out swinging
TKO to the past
like a prize fighter in the ring
The future knows no bounds
It still hurts but the pain has taught you
that you shine
Even when you’re lost
The land knows you, even when you are lost
In its veins flows your blood
Your spirit embedded in the trees
The voices in the rarified air trapped
You hear calling out to yourself fair and free
The memories since childhood sealed
The water knows you too, even when you are lost
Liquid senses flow into being
Your feet washed clean off travails
The rivers, ponds, lakes act as hosts
Recording the stories of your travels
You know and are now willing
You are not lost anymore
Hour 14
@varenyas
The sun shines still as brightly as when you were aware.
Though you do not seem to notice, its beauty still is there.
Though your mind is fogged with worries and your heart is dull today,
The trees are still the same as when they held you in their sway.
The mountains are as lofty as when you visited last year;
the little brooks still babble with confidence and cheer.
The grass still grows beneath you; the sod still sings it song.
All is waiting here to greet you; don’t let them wait too long.
Their joy in life is growing and helping others grow.
Their joy will help to heal you, their love will make it so.
I sometimes go back to the beginning,
to the Sandhills
where I was born,
wild expanses of Nebraska prairie
where I don’t have to speak.
Where no one is left of those
who had known my name.
There is a windmill
and the ruins of a sod house
on the far hill,
I played there as a child,
not knowing that it was
to my grandfather
what his house was to me.
The road is long gone now,
washed down into the valley,
being sand,
and the bricks of the soddy
are just lines in the dirt.
I park my car behind the old barn
near the old Hollibaugh farm
and follow the old ruts.
For a mile they
run, weaving across
the valley floor,
past the rusting ruins
of the cars my grandfather
bought to fill in a ditch.
Wrecks with shot-out
old windows and
flecks of old chrome
leering up out of the ground
beneath the cottonwood trees
in the dry, hot day.
At last at the crest of the hill
the rattle and thunk
of the windmill calls me
over the locked gate
and up to the tank
and I stop to drink from
the blood of the land
that flows
at the call of the wind.
Though I do not love
city life and would leave if
I could,
until I can, which I cannot,
there is a place where I can go
and drink and be still
in the haze of the prairie,
I know that that old mill
and the ruins of the house
will always welcome me back
because,
unlike the city,
the land knows you, even when you’re lost.
I am feeling homesick for a land I used to know;
It was the land my mother knew; in her time of youth did grow.
Her journey took her far from there, to move into the city,
But her heart always felt at home where crickets played their ditty.
Often times the city life would cave right in on her,
And she just felt as lost as an abandoned bird.
We would visit there, gathering blackberries from their bush,
And we would always hear the loud, dry leaves from autumn, crush.
It was always hard to see those hills covered in snow,
For backroads were not cleared, save from the sunlight’s glow.
But when the winter broke, and springtime came acallin’
You would find us there, when new life burst forth with bawlin’.
My Mother would linger far in walks along the land,
And climb the hill to decorate the graves of those so grand.
Sometimes I would go with her, and hear her stories well,
Of the land that held her heart and bore her footprints in its dell.
I must go back and visit soon, without my Mother’s lead–
For she has joined those grand ones, but the land remembers me.
The glass shatters
As he fell through the night
The world fell away
As he tumbled for his life
The pinpoints of light
From far away stars
Looked so beautiful
As he plummeted
To the ground
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
that the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
a home and a country should leave us no more!
Dread silence reposes what the battle was for,
but dawn’s early light undoes the illusion–
a blood-spattered flag, an uncivil war.
The free and the brave safeguard their shore
from the tired and hungry who ask for inclusion–
a home and a country should leave us no more!
Still, we fight to protect our American lore
against those who notice its long desolation–
a blood-spattered flag, an uncivil war–
and our own huddled masses, our own aching poor,
are left on the street like human pollution–
a home and a country should leave us no more!
This land is damaged, right down to the corps
of freemen who stand and salute our delusion,
our blood-spattered flag, our uncivil wars–
a home and a country should leave us no more!
Sober Friend
Grieving without wine
I became the sober friend
Without intention I hear
The ice in their glasses
When I answer the phone
It is almost all of them
And I am surprised
Belonging to this club
For years knowing
The phone was a trigger
Thinking I am missing
I try to imbibe only
To find my glass half
Full in the morning
Virtually untouched
I will not go back
As it is a slippery slope
I am only too familiar
Confusing drink with
Sadness I stay clear
TobeTT # 15
The land knows you,
even when you are lost
calls you home
even after years
enduring countless
cold mornings
watching sideways
as the garden grows
out of the dark black
mulch of night
horizons start to hover
against the light
trees creep, tiptoe up
assume silhouette status
the wind shakes off its shadows
rocks shudder away overcoats
at last a reason to rise
as the earth tilts
A hush had fallen over the house
electric coffee pot brewing
grab the canteen from the shelf
fill to fuel your adventure for the day
as you survey the fog
hovering over the concrete blocks
down by the dock
silvery in the moonlight
waning as the sun appears in the east
inhale the scent of fir
Damn! It’s good to be alive!