The Poetry Marathon

Poetry Prompt Twelve: Moving

8 years a traveller, that’s me,

From homeland to those far flung places, that’s where I may be,

Wandering lost, on a journey,

Of discovery and subsequent destruction,

Following my own path, sweet, crazy, maybe.

I live in a country,

whose motto is ‘We are free!’

But I’ve never felt more repressed,

no job, no visa, no new company.

The end is in sight,

In the future I’ll call on my feet,

To carry me away to lands I’ve not yet seen.

Through Thailand, to Aussie,

New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Both Americas I’ve been,

Europe and Asia, I’ve always felt free.

6 continents of 7, so proud of me,

Now I’m stagnant, I’m stale,

I don’t know who could help me?

But as I wait for immigration to allow me to work,

Throw down some roots,

Make my future with my husband,

A small voice mocks me,

“You travel and travel, now you want roots? Like a tree?”

12. Immigration

 

(Sonnet 2015 @ 8:10 p.m.)

Hour 11: Ursula

You stopped at every corner,
off leash, and waited for a
voice command to cross the street.
Once, you taught a novice named
Kali to do the same, in only five days
of walking together.

Always tolerant of cats, you had
no patience for men who meant me ill.
Once, you reared up like your namesake,
Ursa Minor, Little Bear, only you were
Big Bear by then, and fearsome as a grizzly.

I live and breathe today because of you,
long gone to ashes on the bookcase.
I look at your urn and salute,
and yearn for the feel of your fur again. Shalom.

Hour 11 — A Blessed Life

Ours is a blessed tribe
We believe
The reverse of our name being G-O-D
We can’t help but feel happy at the association

As the old story goes
A long time ago, we left the forest
Separating ourselves from our cousins —
The wolves, the jackals, the foxes, the coyotes
We left the wild life behind
Choosing, instead, to live with humans
Providing them with safety
and companionship

Since then, we identify ourselves
By the humans we serve
and the places we protect
For the sake of that loyalty
We often fight with our own kind
As a matter of course
As a matter of principle

What gives us great happiness
is seeing our kids play with human children
A happy child is the sign of a happy family!!

Almost One

Everyday, there’s a baby I meet online.

He’s nearly a year old and has yet to learn to walk.  His mother’s worried.

She fears there’s something wrong with his legs.  I think he’s too heavy

but, of course, I won’t tell her that.  He isn’t fat, he just can’t find his

balance.  Not yet.

 

When he finally walks, our daily meetings will end.

He’ll walk out of the pictures.  He’ll bury himself in the sand pile.  He’ll

disappear behind a book.  His mother and I will spend a few moments

sipping our digital tea, looking out for him, checking that he hasn’t hit

his head somewhere.  Not yet.

 

 

©  Ella Wagemakers, 02.07 Dutch time (= 20.07 EST in the US)

prompt 11 dog

Finn
Finn, the three legged fiend,
Lost the fourth,
Demanding with menace,
By the railway line.
It ended up in Cardiff, hanging
From a dead fox’s fur,
Which the nasty woman
Never wore again.
For that, we should be thankful.

Finn did ok with the three,
Invoking female compassion,
And secured many a chicken drum
By way of compensation.
No matter that he brought it
On himself, by greed
And round-eyed need,
He knew he was to blame.
For that we should be thankful.

If it had been deemed our fault,
You can bet your last biscuit
He’d never let you forget.
It would cost a fortune
To keep that fiend
In the style he wished
To become accustomed.
I think he did it on purpose.
For that we must be grateful.

Fire – 12/24

I asked people to burn for me

The flames asked if they had purpose to burn,

And I blew them out for asking.

True fire lives without a single question

It knows only to burn.

Poem #12: Down to Earth

I will say anything.
Say anything, and keel over from a tongue
too heavy to taste the fabric shafts of words.
Preferably anonymous to the receiver,
a barista who will never see me again and wonder why
those words suffered to be held in a chest so long.
Rubbing my hands together, the dead skin like
kneaded sand, and I leave it.
The world a knotted sphere to sew my debris.
I can bend freely with the earth
and its blanketed creases, enfolding,
then smooth, as we as children curl,
hide in it tufts.
Every morning my eyes out the window to the west,
yet any cardinal direction woukd led me to you.
My eyes in orbit around the room.
I have to rub my eyes like a child to stay awake.
My elbows tilted, sleeves up past the joints,
proving to myself the earth entrenched beneath
the Saran-wrapped skin.
We end up in love with the hate that binds us,
the mutual sludge to keep our bones in their molds.
If I were a pilot, would I be able to smell
the chloroform of Heaven wafting down?
But I am grounded, desiring, or my blood straying
from its conditional flow, oblivious.
Wanting then, my hand to be knit out of yours,
like the clasped palms of maple leaves
on Front Street, together budding, falling,
deteriorating.

NAS Post 9

GRACE

Grace is more than a wish,    more than a prayer,

more than an answered prayer.

It is all of the love and providence

that goes into being loved and fortunate.

Some choices cause us trouble.

Some of us just cannot SEE that we are loved beyond our asking.

Sue’s Mom didn’t know how to love her

without expecting her to be bad

God’s grace led Sue to succeed

as  a mother determined to love her children.

Toni’s mom didn’t know how to love her children

without broadcasting their every mistake to the community.

God’s grace led Toni to love her Mom anyway.

My mom loved me enough to want me to be healthy and happy

even more than she wanted me to be good.

God’s grace led me to live up to that trust much of the time

and follow her example, and trust in God to help where needed.

The Dangers of Pennyslvania

There’s a place down the road.
A poorly taken care of unkempt road.
Hole the size of a small moon.
The kind that swallows cars whole.
Many brave cars have traveled it.
With aspirations of reaching some destination.
And they have fallen short.
Who knows how many tires ended there.
Each passing week a new victim.
All I ask, all I want to know.
Can I stop paying my taxes.
Till you fix the damn potholes.