October

It isn’t just the cold

nor the dearth of cricket song

nor the waning green

there’s a palpable feel to the quality of air

a lightening, a crisping

as autumn starches and irons

In the absence of birdsong

the crow and the goose play their voices

like bass instruments

rending the silence

stirring the water, rustling the woods—

the days unfold on wings and raucousness

Tomorrow

I used to read my own poetry on a monthly basis at a local open mic platform. Held on the first Tuesday of every month, the event features readings, dance, songsters and instrument players, and occasionally a dramatic bit. When I started taking care of my grand-girls I kept writing poetry, but on Tuesday evenings I was reading bedtime stories and tucking toddlers into bed. This week I'm on a mini-vacation and the first Tuesday of June happens to be tomorrow. Since I've been away, the hostess has instituted monthly themes which performers may follow, or not. Portraits is this month's theme and this is what I will read.

No Daughter of Mine

they laughed,

Mama and Daddy,

and clapped when my six year old self

clomped into the kitchen

all decked out in Mama’s twirly skirt,

her black stiletto heels

her peasant shirt that drooped

off one shoulder like I’d been in

some tussle that would also explain the

smeared red lipstick and my

flowsy-blowsy hair.

Now, taking in my tooled leather boots

my sequined jeans

the silver ring she hates that adorns

our natal connection, she swears

(in her own Mama’s voice)

“No daughter of mine will go 

anywhere looking

like that.”

Her own smeared mouth

sneers at the Smoky Rose on 

my lips, the Purple Dusk on my eyelids.

I’ve become more a threat than

a daughter, a memory of

her own forsaken innocence.

Daddy’s empty space circles her shoulders

like smoke from her cigarette.

Photo credit: www.celesteprize.com

Sunday Prompts

Two works written in response to this Sunday's prompts: "it would be fine if..." inspired by a poem called It Would Be Fine by Rosemary Starace, and "art."

If, And, Or

It would be fine

if I walked out the door tomorrow

and became a tree

the tall, sturdy kind

with its roots grown deep

and its head in the clouds

branches outflung, tender-tipped with buds

that would become leaves

that would become producers of oxygen

that I could breathe in if I didn’t become

a tree,

if, instead, I became a bird

that might alight on my hand

if I stretched it out like a tree branch,

if I could be bird, and branch and hand

and breathe

it would be fine.

If I could be a cloud

that sails the blue sea of the sky,

that plies the ground with rain;

if I could be the wind

that moves the cloud

if I could shine down, shine on, shine through,

be a sun of benevolence,

a sun of vast light,

a sun of strident heat,

it would be fine

if I pulled the fallen rain up

to fill another cloud

that might water a tree

which I might become

when I walk out the door tomorrow.

Seasonal Art

On the mat by the door

the winter boots wait—

a welter of rubber and suede and felt,

one small blue boot

tipped over like an abandoned boat

left to wait for the tide.

A jumble of footwear

made into art by disuse,

a hodge-podge of color,

and fabric, and shape,

a still life until

it snows.

Poetry to Prompts

Written to the prompts of "letter" and "starlight".

Letter to Starlight and You

There is a certain shade of blue

that belongs to dusk,

a sky-blue-pink

that draws my eyes to the window,

that draws me out the door,

a softening of the hard line

where earth meets sky

so that I can see past the horizon

into everlasting space,

the space where you are

now that I can’t see you.

If the sky were a map

you’d be here, just above the line

where tree and air intersect,

a red pin marking the exact spot

where I saw you last,

bed-bound and bruised, breathing

one more and one more and one last

breath.

The sky was dusky that night, too,

headed toward black, and we two headed

in different directions; you to an unknown

destination and I to home, where

out my window, I watched the stars

blink into view.