Poem Per Month Challenge

Hello there!

Last year I wrote a poem every month. For the first three it was coincidence, then when I realised I decided to try to write one for cada mes. It’s a nice way of reflecting, and writing without the thought of people seeing, and with the safety of the past.

I thought others on here might be interested in joining the #poempermonth challenge too

Would love it if you joined me here to share some of your work. here's mine from january last [img]year:





LIMBO

It’s over now; I can see
Those snakes & arrows don’t suffocate me
Binding me into their planes of non-hell
Non-heaven, just a purgatory spell
Not here nor there
Simply being, everywhere
But not so simple, and quite complex
As I trek through this messy hex
Another cave, another lair
Will this one be it? I do despair
Until at last, no more I care
Then my jaded face sees it all there

I’ve found my place, post-limbo lair
My cottage filled with walls & air

I can breathe again, senses returned
Admit I must, lessons I’ve learned
To persevere, to maintain faith
To make yoga, bread, & meditate

That sometimes strength means walking away
That I’m free to go my own way

I can walk for days, hundreds of miles
My own two feet, just a bite to eat

I’m ready now, to roll the dice again
To reach into a further plane
Out of the holding space, into the air
Four elements, I fly: breathe fire, touch earth
And bathe into healing water



29/01/2018

here is my most recent poem.  I'll share more in separate posts.


Sun of Summer


I can feel it yet,
the orange-yellow glow
that reflects off my cheeks.

Eyes squinting tight,
diffusing the blinding light,
warmth blanketing my body.

Skin close to blister
air seemingly sucked from me
as heat waves rise skyward

Arms outspread
I receive the embrace of
the sun of summer.

Where I Now Live

Expanse of sky and rows of maize beyond vision
Are common in my old Cornhusker state.
Now in the land of river and springs and trees
My sky and horizon instead reveal a pastoral landscape,
A place where rolling hills and ravines can be filled
As easily with boar, red fox, and white tail deer
As with Angus, Hereford, and Charolais.
History is at hand, not so deeply plumbed here
Where oak savanna can still be recognized
And tobacco barns occasionally dot the countryside.

Now home is where Jesse James fought and farmed
Where South and North blend, sometimes in harmony,
Other times with veiled words and shadowed thoughts
Of enmity and vileness and private segregation.
Though never far from the past, this place has more promise
For tomorrow than the conservative locations of the plains.
A hope that finds its fruition in undisturbed soil
Teeming with life and percolating with air and water.
Men, women, and families have found this place
To be a new home for health and happiness and wholeness.

Where I once lived, steel mammoths rend fissures
In the earth, scarring its face and exposing its life to punishment
Of heat and wind vaporizing its life-giving water,
Killing lives whose only sin is to be invisible to our eye.
Here, where I live now, the numbers are growing who
Seek to be neighborly to unseen friends, inviting a kind of fellowship
Of collaboration with fungi and nematode in a waltz of life
Originally designed by the Creator for our habitation.
Where I live now, these are instinctive observations, they are at hand
In a place of unity not restricted by the tyranny of time.

Hedgerows of Osage orange, honey locust, and mulberry
Still partition pasture from pasture, field from field, horse from cow.
Yet, the neighbor of my place stands not paddocked alone
But ready, even seeking ways to share in others’ burdens
And pitch in as a mountain-top sermon once explained.
Where I live now, the land and people are neighbors in a place
Of new priorities where earthworm and mayor are equitable
In a community where nothing is hidden from the omniscient Owner
Who more often sees more of His children take up stewardship
Of the place where life, love, and land are synonymous.

The Opera of the Bonfire
for Danielle Barger

Overture

Shattered branches splinter,
giving way forming tinder.
Logs stand leaning dependently together
soon teased from below
and lighted as ignition jumps from twig.
Dry wood yields to fire
converted to ephemeral heat
that is felt but not touched.
The ball of orange, though low,
is born and now in its form.

Act One

Snaps and pops punctuate
the song of the fire.
The lyrics of crackles
call to me as listener.
The score is perfect to accompany
the flashes of color and flame.
Tongues flick yellow, red, and orange
against the black canvas of night.
Sparks fly as wind-born dancers
flitting and swirling at the maestro’s hand.

Act Two

Once restless, now motionless and silent
we watch flames reach and scorch wood.
Heat changing matter from matter
as gasses erupt or whistle.
Some sentinels fall and pile below,
throbbing a pulse of the fire’s heart.
Red spears are thrown into the night air
and the roar is heard at a distance.
The fire consumes all it is fed
and ravenous in climax, it wants more.

Act Three

Eyes weigh heavy so the pit is starved
of the fuel the flame craves for life.
Darts of color now scramble lower, quieter
as the dragon seeks the last morsels.
Ash grows deeper and adorns coals
that try to shine orange through new grey cloak.
As it dies and its dome of heat recedes,
the show unknots to reveal the truth.
The curtain of day lowers without call
leaving only a memory of a performance.

8 lines of eight syllables ending in
Also, Their, The, Need, May, Of, Good, However (words chosen at random)

"Many words" they could say also
And I could be no where near their
Expectation. They could know the
Objective to which they make need
And I should do as they bid. May...

(to be cont) /joke