hour 5 poem
surface wind
over the lake
no willows
to bend over
before my
apprentice wizard
craft…
nature can also
do magic
at Hogwarts
Hour 5 (My daughter’s p.o.v.)
Mommy is giving me that look again
I wish we would just play pretend
She’s going to lean in close to my face
Very seriously, while making sounds I don’t understand
Wait… I think this mumble jumble gibberish
The grown ups speak has meaning
Now mom keeps pointing to that picture, repeating the same thing
Let me try… “eye keen” no… that’s not it… “eyes kweem”
What is this foolish woman trying to do?
She looks so silly with her eyes so big
pointing to her mouth dramatically, too
Thinking the exaggeration will help me learn
Mom, I clearly hear you saying “ice cream”
But learning to say it is a difficult thing
If trying again will make you stop,
Then I’ll give it another shot
“ice kweeeeeeem”
Look at mommy gleam!
“ICE kweeeeem!”
I’ve got it! Mommy is smiling so big!
Yummmmmy! So this deliciousness has a name
And all this time I thought it was mommy’s silly game
Every time I wake, I learn something new
Maybe tomorrow I’ll teach mommy about my nose’s green goo
My Lost Star
My Miracle is yet to meet my yearning soul
Still scanning this Universe with some light years ahead of us
He and I are like lost stars in this ocean of constellations
The crescent moon is at bay with its beaming glory
Unknown ’til now that we might be each other’s destiny.
Author/Poet Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo
Hour Five
Granting wishes
Righting wrongs
Waving wands
Singing songs
A fairy’s work is never done
Happy thoughts
Children fly
Boys lost
Mothers cry
A fairy’s day isn’t all fun
Crocodiles tick
Pirates fight
Darling children
Homeward flight
A fairy’s world is full of woe
Believers clap
Lives saved
Lost found
Adventure craved
A fairy’s life, I love it so
Because of You (Because of Me) (Hour Five)
I ran.
I ran to run towards and away.
I ran to move.
Like a shark, I would die, if I did not move.
Columns of sorrow rose up in this city.
I never perceived them before.
It took near-fatal heartbreak,
To become sensible
To the near-fatal heartbreak that is like fabric,
Like mesh,
The warp and the weft.
You.
You threw a javelin.
How did you have such perfect aim?
And I, compelled to run,
Cannot remove it, or I will die outright.
What a heavy object with which to move.
What weight I bear because of you (because of me).
Window AC
I have power buttons and thunder sounds,
And they complain I run too loud.
But I stand still, balanced
On their window sill,
Half in and half out,
In the heat and in the house.
I may not look like a ballerina,
But that is what I am.
I dance my cold air dance
Like a swan in the moon light
My boxy shape and industrious frame
Dances en point in the cool
Relief of restful human dreams.
Into Light
Passing into light
From darkened shadows of trees
Take your flight, sweet dove
by Karen Sullivan
Form: Haiku
#5
I wake up and go to check up
on the older female, as I know
all too well when she has to be
up and walking towards the
kitchen, then I can eat.
It’s a thing, I don’t eat alone,
even when the bowl is full,
I need the company of a
human.
Most days are pretty much
the same, they get up, they
leave and they come back,
usually at the same time,
and as the other four-legged one
is old, she is no longer the
messenger of the keys dangling
outside the door, my hearing
is much better as I am
still young.
And yet today, they have taken
them out again, the soft boxes
the ones that are not always
open and often just
too large for me.
They are moving objects
that take up space in
the soft box, and I hurry
to climb in, to take up
my space, that should
rightfully belong to me.
They think that I don’t know,
but I see they are leaving.
I know they will be back, but
I just really want to
go with them.
Dramatis Personae
You open the door with no inkling of what’s to come;
Today is the day I end it;
We had a fun run, but it’s over, don’t you see?
And this is going to be icky;
Because you won’t cooperate;
Sitting there with your green eyes;
Crying like a bitch;
Why can’t you just yell at me like I want you to do?
Then I could yell back, leave and slam the door;
It would be the easiest thing for both of us;
Instead, I have to sit here and listen to your weak shit as you blubber in my lap;
And while I hold you I have to look around the room;
I see the reminders of the times we fucked like beasts;
I see where you held me as I told you about the woman I loved who left with tears in my eyes;
And where, after I apologized taking up our date with that story, you just smiled and said “This is the work”;
No, bitch, this is the work
Because now I have to leave.
-30-
Divine Mind
A crack in the sky
lets sunlight seep
through the logy muck
of morning and mourning
making this one moment
peculiar, enough to reach
up and tear open
the heart of the orb
that sustains us
while pulling us under
into the distant keening.