Prompt 18
My dear,
You are a spitting image of me
From the way you wear your hair
To the way you drink your tea.
Spiritual Advisor
Ancient medicine
Healing herbs
Sunshine
Secrets passed from generation to generation
Hands tending to Gardens
Drawing woven in with good intentions
A prayer to deities
Magical decoctions infusions of the mystical and powerful and the natural
Herbs Blended with a natural know how
Tea Awakening
She was
Poem 5
She was
She made it home
Despite the brewing storm
A smile in the middle of the madness
A drink of water
In the barren sands of the Sahara
She was more than she knew
So much more than she believed
Looking back
The path that was
The chapters that faltered
The sentences that didn’t make sense
It was there
She just didn’t know
And he left before he could tell
Dragging Onward
Tick tock,
sounds the clock, hoping for the best.
Ding dong,
rings the gong. The day is almost through.
Golden Memories
A vague face peeks from the maze of mind,
almost distinguishable. I gather in solitude,
the golden memories of us together, fishing,
singing, and hours of storytelling.
Beloved grandfather, reminiscence is cathartic.
Lesson in Gardening
My yellow squash died.
Three of them I drenched
until the cool of spring
rotted their roots.
I watered and they did not grow,
and so, I watered more
and more, for hours at a time
each and every morn.
Behind them, the zucchini went.
And, oh! The butternut, too!
My thumb now brown as matter spent
because I water too soon.
My love
My heart is missing you so much
I know we will be together again
I feel you so close to me
Just like you are right
Here my love
The Mechanism (2017)
Lightning crashes
Storm rages
Flash
The mechanism
In the garden
Bizarre
Temptation presses
Curiosity wins
Explosion
Hour Seventeen Creation Mythology
17 2017 Creation Mythology
Creation Mythology
by Paul Robert Sanford
Long time past,
before the Big Bang myth scattered the stars
and send cooling balls of matter to become
planets and moons
and the myth of evolution populated
the water planet named dirt upon which we live.
Long time past
Before Galileo set the Earth dirt spinning around our Sun,
before Arab and Egyptian scholars mapped the distant stars.
That time,
Everybody lived on a flat dirt planet surrounded by water on every side.
Some water fell out of the sky, some was down below.
The Sun and Moon behaved themselves and flowed across the sky
each day and night.
That time,
there were many stories to explain Everything.
Our planet was a bid of bird poop on a tortoise shell.
The Sun a ball the trickster Raven stole from Bear
and threw up high in the sky to keep from being caught.
Mountain tops had names and histories,
Rivers flowed from the homes of powerful beings known as gods.
The stories made a kind of sensible nonsense that taught us
not to ask too many questions lest we anger spirits that were listening.
The problems came when Raven and Bear and the magical beings and spirits
got promoted into full fledged gods
that demanded worship, sacrifices, loyalty as a price for rain and good crops.
Pretty soon every nation, tribe and watering hole had its resident god or godling.
Some of them weren’t up to the job.
They demanded too much and gave too little.
They ruled by fear and punished with flood, famine and plague.
It was untenable.
Then some bright Charlie or Charlene came up with the bright idea
that religion and gods could be good.
Pretty soon people were meditating or telling stories about how to have a better life.
Now there were franchises in which Creation was made on purpose
out of love for all that is and kindness for people, who are special.
The earth was still flat and the sun reassuringly went around us,
and everything could be explained.
It was written down in big books.
Now great thinkers stand astride the Creator myth and the Bang,
striving to make them work as a team and lead humanity in a good direction.
But the trickster is still at work and we are still confused.
That is a sketch of the many mythical stories of creation as we know it and have known it.
May we find salvation in the truth, if we ever figure it out.
And that’s the Truth, whatever that is.
After the Rain
Poem 4
After the rain
The sun does come out after all
It peeps from behind fluffy balls of cotton
It waits, it lingers
And I wonder does it frown or smile?
Silly mortals perhaps it contends
Just as it smoothly edges out
Stretching its arms as if in a yawn
Light rays spraying wide across
Like opportunity and hope and more tomorrows for us silly folk.