autumn leaf carpet shifting patterns in the wind green grass underlay
Underfoot
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Tag Archives: poetry
Swept Away
sweep me off my feet take me to the moon and back you magical broom
I Just Want to Be
“I’m miserable,” she utters despondently.
Her head drops to the table,
face smushed into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“I just want to be happy.”
Happy? Hell, I’d settle for functional.
“Is that too much to ask?”
She sniffles into her sleeve.
“Not at all,” he says.
“Everyone deserves to be happy.”
Kind eyes. Calm voice. Practiced cadence.
How does one deserve an emotion? I wonder.
Either you feel it, or you don’t.
Or is it a state, and not an emotion?
The state of happiness…
Can one deserve to be in a state?
What about the state of depression?
No one deserves that, that’s for sure.
Then again, no one would likely say,
“I just want to be depressed.”
The clock on the wall seems frozen.
I will the hands to move more quickly.
They don’t.
Perhaps I don’t deserve a faster clock.
He turns toward me. Observation mode.
I don’t meet his gaze, but I don’t look away, either.
Blank eyes. Silence. Practiced apathy.
“And how are you this morning?” he asks gently.
I consider the question.
Perhaps I should have prepared a response.
It’s not like I didn’t know he’d ask.
“Depressed,” I say.
“That’s why I’m here.”
I just want to be well.
Is that too much to ask?
The Daily Post Discovery Challenge: Radical Authenticity
Boo?
pale dog haunts the night loveable apparition fails to cause a fright
Nine Lives
One day you ran away from me.
You dashed between two cars.
With three great leaps you crossed four lanes.
I thanked your lucky stars.
Five dogs behind a six foot fence
you noticed noticed you.
You didn’t see the seven inch gap
that let them slip right through.
Eight inches from your heels they chased;
you couldn’t take much more.
The dogs howled with dismay as you
slammed through your small cat door.
Twas just that morn nine lives you had;
lost eight while on the run.
You scared me nearly half to death.
Now we’re down to half plus one.
Summer Afternoons
metal bowl on lap peas shelled from crisp green pods fall pinging into bowl
The Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Nostalgia
Story Time
“What story do the things you wear tell about you?”
(The Daily Post Discover Challenge: Outer Layers)
The story I portray,
the story I live,
the story you tell yourself about me,
the story I tell myself about me…
Do the clothes I wear
tell about me,
or are they simply fodder for
lots of stories?
It’s so tempting to judge
a book by its cover.
Belated Quest
Sad to think
I never really knew you.
As I sift through gleanings
of a life concluded,
hidden facets surface that I am
just now seeing for the first time.
Sad to think
I am left to piece together
a life story that for all these years
lay nestled in yellowing tissue paper,
carefully tucked away at the bottom of
your cedar chest.
The Daily Post weekly photo challenge: Quest
Vertebrate Sapiens
Humans are so creepy,
with only four legs and
hairy heads and
just two eyes that sometimes
have glassy covers or dark lids which
obscure their eyes completely.
Whenever they see me
they jump and scream
and start flailing their four legs about;
you’d think they’d caught a hornet
in their web.
It’s really quite scary.
I wish they’d leave me alone
and go back to where they came from,
wherever that is.
Sometimes I play with them.
I know it’s not spiderly of me,
but it’s such a kick to hear their squeals when they
pull back the shower curtain and find me
hiding in the bath tub.
This Halloween I think I will dress up
as a human.
The Daily Post one-word prompt: Jump
From a Different Lifetime
One hand clapping
Today the Daily Post’s one-word prompt is Silence.
I wrote a poem years ago with that title, and will share it here. The poem has a totally different voice and came from a completely (almost) different person than I am today.
I am content with who I am today, and grateful for the journey that got me here. Sometimes it’s a valuable exercise to look back and be reminded from whence one evolved.
Silence
Before ego there was silence.
Then ego emerged, dragged by intangible forceps
from the serene sea of oneness with its maker
into the harsh artificial light of material world.
No wonder ego screamed.
The small, still voice – also part of Oneness –
was drowned out by a raucous cacophony.
Ego began devouring material world like a strident crow
feasting at an overripe dumpster.
I meditate, try to invoke the resurgence of silence,
but my goal eludes me.
I strive to empty my mind,
but ego will not go away.
It careens from synapse to synapse,
ricocheting off every thought mote
that sifts down through my span of consciousness.
Silence is golden (so they say),
but when I fall mute, others worry.
Outwardly I am judged as too quiet.
Inside, ego shouts in derision.
Is silence relative or absolute?
Is there such a thing as too silent?
Or partial silence? (The sound of one hand clapping, perhaps…)
We seldom understand what we hear.
Why would we expect to comprehend silence?
It is not essential to fill every void.
Only ego thinks this way.
Silence is not a void begging to be filled,
but I do beg…
that ego will surrender, and the void in me can be filled
with the still, small voice that is Silence.
~ MCC (@ 2000)
“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”
~ Henri Nouwen
What Rhymes with Stanza? 