"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”
Don't google old boyfriends.
They've gone old
and gained weight.
They have daughters
And sons
They're happy.
He wanted to take you to the ocean
lull in the sand and try again.
Don't google old boyfriends.
And may they not google you.
They see you as then,
carefree and tanned
with hair down your dress.
Happy.
I
The Last Snowfall
The child playing
in the driveway
while his dad shovels
will remember snow.
II
The Mirror
The hair that falls out in the shower
is still black.
Why in the mirror is it not?
The face cream claims to lift.
It’ll lift your lids right off your face.
Why in the mirror does it not?
We worry about bills and cancer
and if the car will start
and the junction in our lifeline.
Put a dimmer switch in the bathroom.
Life is too short to worry about our health.
III
Gravity
The door swings empty. Dust settles.
Flesh accommodates.
The old lady stumbles but she recovers.
I
hurt therefore I am.
When you crossed the hospital lobby
Did you think to escape?
Pick up your feet.
Make a wrong turn and you could come up
missing,
walking back at yourself in the elongated
mirrors
hung in corners. Don’t breathe.
The ventilator hisses and pumps,
tireless machine needing only an outlet.
The incident, unforeseen, took her down
one day before she was to come home,
one from which she could not recover.
It’s raining again at the window bed,
steady as the pocket watch ticking unseen.
It paces us through gathering events.
In a place like this
the only time I ever saw my father cry.
Out of time. And when was it ours?
Sometimes we can’t go home but would it
matter
if we don’t recover?
We get along. Dust settles.
Door one is for those with questions about their disability check.
Door two is for those who didn’t get their disability
check.
Door three is for those who can’t find a doctor to treat
their disability.
Door four is for those who have been denied their
disability.
Door five is for those who were Sectioned Eight, no
disability.
Door six is for those seeking legal advice.
Door seven is for those whose paperwork never not submitted, go back to door one.
Door eight is for those who got kicked out of the shelter, go back to door six.
Door nine is for those suffering hallucinations, go back to door three.
Door ten is for those deemed a danger to themselves by door three.
Door eleven is for those who exhausted one through ten.
This poem is linked to dVerse and the inspiring post from Peter Frankis in Australia,
commemorating poetry, line breaks (when and how to take a breath) and endings, metaphorically and visually.
And, finally, may none of us have to frequent this hallway. Breathe
Snow fog encases each
blade of grass,
each winter’s branch in wispy ice
as the hunter hidden in his blind
rests his weapon on the sill.
The rising sun lifts the fog—
a breath, a pause, a trigger pull.
A rush of wing, a whoosh of air
the ricocheting echo fades.
Steam releases from the kill
and quiet calms the forestland.
This hunting season inspired poem is linked to Earthweal (poetry for a changing world) and their open link weekend.
To melt and be
like a running brook that sings its melody to the night - Gibran
There are words you can hang
that will tell you how to feel.
Who to love. What to think.
Hang above the entryway
or in the hallway
where I saw my mother walking
toward me in the mirror
like free-flowing water.
My take on Stepping Off The Sidewalk
Stranded in the time of Covid-
one way in, one way out
but torrential rains washed out
the culvert and the deliveryman can't find her.
Nothing to drink but a neighbor's Folgers
nine months pregnant when water rushing
down the ravine cracked the culvert,
the plundering of man with his man-made things,
the high-brow engineer with a clipboard
couldn't stop the rush to nowhere
as hurricane after hurricane
follows the same path north
to clip this saturated land
from where now there is no way out.