Author Archives: Maggie C

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About Maggie C

Stained glass artist, writer, respecter of life.

Coffee Queue

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11

coffee

The “drive thru” lane of the coffee house
was perhaps not aptly named,
as “driving” implies movement,
not this line with mere glacial gain.

Sitting in my car that morn
I awaited my morning brew,
my patience growing thinner as
my caffeine headache grew.

Exhaust fumes drifted through the air
adding fuel to the fire,
igniting the glowing embers of
my ever growing ire.

When at last the car in front of mine
to the cashier’s window drew,
the driver seemed unprepared to pay
and so my frustration grew.

After all this time she had to wait
you’d think she’d manage to
have her payment at the ready
since she knew what amount was due.

Instead of moving through the line,
a discussion soon ensued.
What the hell was there to talk about?
Pay your money and move on through.

“Two dollars? Yes, we can do that.”
I heard the cashier say.
Oh great, I thought, and rolled my eyes.
Seems I’ll be stuck here all day.

At last the driver pulled away.
I moved up to take her place,
my money at the ready
so as not to slow the pace.

“The customer just in front of you
asked if she could pay
two dollars toward your drink order.
I guess it’s your lucky day.”

The anger that I’d fed upon,
self-righteous indignity,
was more poisonous than the exhaust fumes
and more damaging to me.

The lesson that I learned that day:
more patient I must be.
It was more than just a cheaper drink
that the driver gave to me.

The next time I get stuck like that,
I won’t begrudge the time.
I’ll just pay two dollars extra for
the next car in the line.

WordPress Writing 201, Assignment Six. Prompt: neighborhood. Form: ballad. Device: assonance.

Lost and Found

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16

Hoo boy! So I’m taking this poetry class thing from WordPress, and today’s assignment was to create a “found poem.”

The description of a found poem was given thusly:

A found poem is composed of words and letters you’ve collected — randomly or not — from other sources, whether printed, handwritten, or digital, and then (re)arranged into something meaningful.

Well… I found something alright, but I don’t know if it would qualify as poetry. Perhaps my source of these collected phrases was a determining factor in how this would go. A Trader Joe’s monthly flyer can be pretty random even before you start cutting and pasting.

The good news: I kept it short. I think my found poem would have perhaps been better off remaining lost. Oh, and there was a suggested theme (face), and a poetry device (chiasmus). I didn’t even attempt to throw those in. All for the best, I think.

Here goes:

found poem

Oh, wait! Did they say “meaningful?”

Finding Happy

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8

The theme for this week’s Daily Post photo challenge is “happy place,” and the question is “where do you go to get your groove back?”

I don’t so much have a “happy place,” as I do a “contentment place.” When life gets a bit too chaotic, here are three of my “retreats”:

Walks with my buddy.
walks

Getting lost in creativity.
studio

Nature
oceanside

I actually have many happy places. In fact, I’m in one right now. I call it “home.”

Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy Place

GLove

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Skin so soft, I hesitate to touch it sometimes with my age-worn own. My knuckles, a roughened ridge spanning the width of my hand. Yours, an innocent row of dimples where hand meets fingers. When you reach up to hold my hand – or maybe just a finger or two – I am honored. It’s a gift, so swift in the offering that one might miss it, mistake it as just something we do, holding hands. But I catch it, and hold it, and tuck the feeling away in my mind, like a hand slipping into a glove, to keep warm for when coldness sets in.

skin

WordPress Writing 201, Assignment Three. Prompt: skin. Form: prose poem. Device: internal rhyme.

Boundaries of the Dead

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19

Low fences of concrete and iron
in varying degrees of sturdiness or collapse,
delineate gravesites and family plots
of a long-established and
long-neglected pioneer cemetery.

Whether they are meant to keep the living out,
or the spirits in, I’m not sure.
They seem inadequate for either task.

boundary2

As a child I wandered this place of the dead,
on Sundays, after I had escaped the
torturously long church service,
and before my parents finished
drinking burnt coffee and eating stale cookies
and were finally ready to take me home.

boundary1

Ever careful to avoid the mounds and divots
that belied a coffin underneath,
my imagination jumped at the chance
to interpret any slight cold breeze
that made the hanging moss sway, and
any crooked dead branch that
pointed at me like a bony accusatory finger,
as some displaced spirit,
disgruntled at my presence there.

boundary3

Was it disrespectful to enter the gates
of those family plots since I did not
belong to the family?
Was I overstepping the boundaries
of the long-departed when I
stepped over the fences
that parceled out their final resting places?

I guess I won’t find out the rules
for graveyard boundary etiquette
until I depart to my own final resting place.

boundary4

If you come to my gravesite
to pay your respects,
look for a bony tree-branch finger
beckoning you to draw near,
and wait for that cold breath of air to
whisper in your ear.
I will give you the answers
about the boundaries of the dead.
And then I will cross that final boundary,
where long-winded sermons,
burnt coffee, and stale cookies
can haunt me no more.

boundary5

Weekly Photo Challenge: Boundaries