Turning Down The Linen

The lost sunrise, rare coin, I now lament.

So too, its flaming slide at end of day.

I can’t escape my farm girl’s sentience.

Unleash me over those fields of fresh mown hay,

Not here, where brick and steel climb up the sky,

Where wren and hawk have flown a quick retreat.

Gray smoke and stacks alike tarnish surprise,

Over a city that rumbles beneath my feet,

That busy beast that swallows every sound.

With clotted breath to water’s edge I’m drawn

Where stars appear from out the black surround.

Like fields of wheat, waves undulate in song.

And then there’s you with power to part the night.

You turn the linens down and dim the lights.

I'm pounding the pentameter for d'Verse, the poet's pub, a top destination for poets worldwide to meet and share their work.  

The challenge here from Ingrid  is to write a poem in the heartbeat of iambic pentameter. da-dum, da, dum, da-dum,da-dum. 

And then order a drink!

Flamethrower Super Heros

Finches crowd the feeders
as a masked man fills the suet
sucking in his own stale air.
We all looked alike for over a year.
Maybe to them we always did.
Masks made from tee shirts,
faded rags from under the sink,
repurposed under the foot
of dusty sewing machines
pulled out of closets.

With thread directed through the eye
of a world that tightened around us,
we grew suspicious and more alone.
In the evening we howled off porches
like wolves at the moon
          (doomed one day to follow them gone)
sang from balconies and from behind barricades
for our flamethrower super heroes
who lived in hotels and slept on cots
to save this suicidal world
from behind their masks.

With these in mind: Absence of Color from Poets and Storytellers and Earthweal (poetry for a changing world), I dusted off an old subject that went and grew legs. 

The Number Two Bus

  

The downtown line

is the Number Two bus.

It lurches forward

and bodies sway with the clutch

of the Number Two bus.

 

Home to the homeless

    (bags of belongings between their feet)

they’re out of the rain for the length of the route.

Seattle is tolerant of her homeless.

They don’t have to pay to ride the Number Two Bus.

 

A homeless man boards with a jug of eggnog

and he holds it in his lap like a baby.

Everyone looks at his gallon of eggnog.

What a sensible homeless man

with a sensible breakfast he grips with his thumb.

 

Commuters and senior citizens,

tourists and homeless all share the bus,

the dependable, rollicking Number Two bus.

 

You dropped your smile, a hard-to-place cad

    (doesn’t fit in a niche)

says to the girl who boards with a backpack.

He smirks as she looks down and around.

 

Unflappably cool, she buries her face in a book

but he got her to look,

and the homeless, the commuters, and the tourists

all laugh as the driver lets out the clutch

of the Number Two bus.

Written on our pre-covid trip to Seattle, which now seems like the good 'ol days, brought out of hiding by dVerse's prompt to write about a smile, (a smirk, a laugh?) maybe my ride on the Number Two Bus fits into the niche. Check out all the talent at dVerse when you have an extra minute!

TGIF!!!