Month: April 2024

by

Beginnings 4-30-2024

Beginnings

I.

I walk the darkened beach,
wind hissing through seagull hair,
salt lying thick on silent tongues, 
strong sea arms 
melting like fallow wax over empty footsteps.
Words seize form around me to
scatter and run like sandpipers
darting through riverlets of spraying surf.
It from here that we have come.

II.

I play church and steeple
with the intertwined fingers
of our lives,
wrists twisting and snapping
like unfolding flowers,
mapping my caves of bones,
singing blood songs full of sea.
The layered fossils of my hand
press hard against yours as I turn.

III.

I am a black hole
opening to a million universes
in one.


by

Retro Tuesday 4-30-2024

JSW Prompt response from 3-6-2016

images (2)

Mr. Binks shivered against my leg as I crouched behind the tombstone carved with the name Harry Hat. Somebody got screwed on that one. Mr. Binks is tiny and short-haired, so I made myself believe he was cold, at least for the moment. Then he began to growl.

I glanced right and left, to Holly and Susan, huddled behind neighboring tombstones. Could dead people have neighbors? Did they think of the person in the next grave as just living one house over? Or did it matter?

Of course, it didn’t matter. I’m 12. I don’t believe in ghosts anymore. At least in the daylight.  Nighttime… I’m not quite so sure.

Jonny said the ghosts rose at midnight, dancing around the grave of a witch. Sounded fishy to me. Some of those dead folks had to have more smarts than that. Pretty stupid to rise out of the grave just to do-wop around another stone. I could think of much better things to do…. like scare the pants off Jonny Brown.

Boys!

My eyes rolled of their own accord; my automatic response whenever the subject arose. On the other hand, they did have their uses. Sometimes.

I heard a sound. Not a happy kind of sound; more like the creaking of an old door opening….. Did graves have doors?

Holly cried something and I glanced over her way. The dog crept over and huddled beside her. She’d always been a scary-cat. Susan, on the other hand, was just as curious as me.

Faint music started, coming from a distance and growing louder. I glimpsed white forms gathering about twenty yards away. Pulling back, I looked over at Susan and made wavy-arms motions. Ghosts didn’t look like bed sheets, not unless they are on Charlie Brown. We both nodded and looked round our headstones. The ghostly forms danced around a tombstone, bopping up and down like really bad dancers.

Susan and I locked eyes. I motioned for her to go round the other side of her stone, while I did the same with mine, good old Harry Hat watching my backside. Ducking stone to stone, we easily reached the far side of the dancers; they were so into their dance they didn’t bother to look around. Pulling on the sheets we’d hidden earlier, I mouthed, ‘One, two, three…’ We jumped up, whooing up a storm.

The ghosts stopped dead in their tracks then ran screaming, sheets streaming off to hang round tombstones like flags. Holly and I fell to the ground, laughing.

Boys… that’ll teach them.

by

Dragon Dreams 4-29-2024


Dragon Dreams

Trees snake toward the widening sky
like dragons freed,
claws digging deep
in rich red clay,
red orange gold flames
sprouting from branching jaws,
blanketing the ground
with scattered sparks,
piling against the fence corner
like drifted snow.
I dream dragon dreams
in the gathered dark,
covered in a blanket of rich autumn leaves,
tiny child against my breast
breathing deep the fragrant myrrh
of sleep

by

Geese 4-28-2024


Geese

Words whistle through
emerald leaves of oak;
I journey from the mundane
to the particular,
searching for pennings
so long stilled.
If I could
step past the uniform
grey wash of the skyline
to re-mouth words spoken
in a dream
I could recall you to me,
but words slip
through fumbling fingers,
fly fleece filled
across the milky dawn line
like stag-headed Huntmaster
prancing impatiently-
cloven hooves like rifle shots
in the crackling clean snow.

by

4-27-2024

Autumn Walk

We walk the raging sands
you and I.
I am angry-
not at you
but at the endless
controls over my life;
the ceaseless need to rise
and hurry and wait.
Better this
windswept beach,
waves tossing, fighting
to reach sandy shore,
thick cold foam ringing pale ankles.
Heels digging deep in thick
wet sand
as we stride rapidly 
towards the dark slats of the pier.
Pelicans ride waves
just beyond rising swells,
brown wings spreading against the sea.
Reaching rising onto the hard grey wood
of the pier 
I watch fishermen reel
in endless silver coins
feel their incessant
gasp and struggle for breath.
Drowning in air. 
On the way back
we pick up trash together.
On the cement walls fronting each hotel
shadow images of the night waves
remain,
drying slowly softly 
in the breaking sun.