FORGOTTEN

The empty water bottle glows beneath the morning sun calling out the hands whence it ‘accidentally’ slipped when its usefulness was gone. Should it be happy that it is not alone that it joins the ranks of the forgotten flooding the earth exacting vengeance? I am writing about one of my pet peeves – empty

A WALK IN THE SWAMPLAND

    Our feet pounded on the boardwalk The sun hammered on our heads The cattails stood still on the swamp Would the trail ever end? Reeds and more reeds stretched around us Their heads drooped as though in shame No music wafted from their wicked green pipes, No sparrow played on their slender blades.

MEMORIAL

Tucked in the woods, by an abandoned rural road, a little old cemetery lies.  About fifty weathered gravestones rise from the wildflower and grass-covered ground.  Nobody visits the place.  After all, the most recent gravestone was placed in the early 1900’s. However, when Memorial Day comes, new flags fly in the graveyard, specifically by the

JOY

Camille Pissarro: Peasant Woman and Child Returning from the Fields, Auvers-sur-Oise , Image in Public Domain according to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Camille_Pissarro_-_In_the_Vegetable_Garden.jpg In obscure silence, she toils in her little garden in this side of Heaven an unknown soul blessed with no great wealth nor noble name She labors doing what her state requires humble work or service

A LULLABY NIGHT

I have sung all the lullabies I know. I have told and re-told his favorite stories. My voice is tired, my eyelids droop, and still, my toddler wiggles and squiggles in my arms. He would not sleep. I pray a silent prayer, he pokes my lips driving his little finger against my teeth. My disapproving

SUMMER TREAT

The sweetness of summer dripped from my chin Juicy mangoes with their golden skin whose fragrance coated the humid air what temptation for a child to bear plump fruits dangling from a neighbor’s tree so worth the neighbor’s chase and my scraped knee.   ~~~~ Summer will always remind me of mangoes whose golden flavor

SHE

  Stars behold the wonder of her daughter of the seen and unseen of the finite and the timeless Yet naked eyes see only what sight would allow – the form and the lines that make her appearance, an organic shape that becomes what perception makes. She’s beautiful she’s plain, she’s charming, she’s mean –

WINTER

Winter breeds black roses in a soul stripped of warmth. Darkness broods in isolation begrudging the probing light. Tar flows in sullen veins fills in the spaces wounds had carved. Hands grasp at brittle sunbeams that cold had made sharp. Flowers fall into the ground marking the spot where hope once stood. Stars blink out

BEAUTY

Beauty escapes the words I have refusing to be pinned down and reduced to black ink on paper. Foolish am I to think my poem can paint the soaring trill of sparrows greeting the sun. My senses embrace what they perceive and I exalt. ~~~~~~~ DVERSE POETS’ Quadrille prompt – Poem Mundane Monday Challenge 145

FOR WANT OF SPICES (A Quadrille)

For want of spices, sailors sailed across the seas to lands unknown braving squalls and mutinies searching for peppers, cloves, and cinnamon only to find their precious spice owned by ‘savage’ tribes – once free, then no more. No more bland food for the conqueror.     ~~~~~~~~~~~ Mish asks the DVerse Poets’ Pub patrons