24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
I’m empty
where you once filled a special place
in my heart.
Sometimes, I find it hard to breathe.
Your voice echoes in my mind,
my ears deaf to the warning
of what was to come,
so sudden, so final.
No longer in pain,
I rejoice in your freedom.
Yet I will still mourn;
you never let me say, goodbye.
Sunflowers lead me back to childhood when I had to look up, up, up to see petals waving and pressing high against the bluest sky. Golden dreams were the clouds' outlines. Heartbroken and jaded, I quietly plead, "Sunflowers, lead me back to childhood" when despair was never larger than sidewalk shadows or the lightning bugs' nighttime shows.
Summers of healing turned to winters of deep sleep. As I learned grace in slowing down, I'd let memories of sunflowers lead me back to childhood, sipping elixers of nature's berries, herbs, and flowers. Sighing in these silent years of distance and stunted dreams, I don't mourn challenges and losses along the rock-strew road. Grace comes quietly and with her gentle invitation to let sunflowers lead me back to childhood.
Image by Martin Torrez
Swinging in sunflowers
Brings memories of nostalgia for summer days
Sunny and hot.
when cold ice cream could quench a thirst
Feet high to the sky,
Swinging in sunflowers
Free as a bird in the sky
when summer seemed like forever
Back and forth
Going higher and higher
swinging in sunflowers
when summer was time to spend with friends
Playing in fields of summer,
time stood still
when we were kids
swinging in sunflowers
I remember many things
Like the time I had my own swing
It’s rope and wood and hangs on a tree
He’s always there to set me free
I’ll swing so high that I can see the next road
Going back and forth on foot to climb higher is fun
Sometimes I’ll be brave and take the leap
Fly through the air and land with a thud
Many times this trick really works
But sometimes it really hurts
I want to go back to simpler times
When joy is fun and it’s not a crime
When we are humans and jokes were jokes
No one is angry at what life has in store…
Swirls of colors zoom past my head
Filling up the space above and below
The edge of the earth
Where void and expanse
Touch
Tempting peace and time
Like the creation of Adam
Always in each other’s orbit
But never touching
Never connecting
I hold my breath in my chest
Feeling it’s warmth spread through my limbs
The sun is so close
But it’s blazing fire keeps burning
The chill of emptiness
Penetrates beneath my skin
Burrows deep in my meat and bones
There won’t be much more time here
And I’m at peace with that end
At peace with this choice
To sit at the edge of the world
Lahainatown (a two part viator)
Lahainatown (a two part viator)
1.
… and then they died
alone in cars
running through smoke
leaping for sea
huddled hopeless
and then they died
unthinkably
along the streets
trapped in their homes
screaming, pleading
and then they died
prayers in their throats
unanswered prayers
swept up in flames
burned with their flesh
and then they died.
2.
Lahainatown
oh, Maui’s heart
lies desolate,
suffocated.
Unmarked graveyard
Lahainatown
of bone and teeth
in powder silt
still and silent
host of fireghosts
Lahainatown
welcomes them all
to stay among
the healing arms
of Banyon roots,
Lahainatown…
.
the group least acknowledged on Labor Day is labor.
Seek and you shall surrender, the old sage sang,
but I turned away, mumbling in response, “Oh, yeah.”
The eager ones agreed and kissed his brittle, sun-crusted feet.
Keep walking the straight and high, narrow and low road;
Seek and you shall surrender, the old sage sang, and
The rebels tossed stony glares at the old man’s knees.
No path is too steep to fall on, no caves too dark to see,
but I had nothing, a mind blanked out, an empty pod,
so I turned away, mumbling in response, “Oh, yeah.”
Peace is one step more, two to each side, a dance,
but I only shook my head and snorted, “Sure.”
The eager ones agreed and kissed his brittle, sun-crusted feet.
Yoked with responsibility
Void of compromise
A second hand sweeps around the circle
Beauty of days and nights are lost
Only the grist between the stones
Flours the future
A rusted memory of a childhood laugh
A rusted board that held a child high
A field so vast, flowers barely grown half
A field that carries yet carries the bright innocence cry
Now old and brown, it stands empty
The breeze, the only melody heard
For maybe years passed a ten or twenty
Awaiting a laugh from third
Until then, the sunflowers shall shield it’s innocent memory
Standing guard of the distant laugh from what felt like a century