On Second Thought....

In my little corner of the world, we have enjoyed one the longest springs I can remember with many days of rain and rolling thunder and only one tornado warning. I love thunderstorms like that, and had planned to post a poem about how intoxicating storms can be when they offer no imminent danger. But the recent series of storms that pounded the South, leaving so many dead, injured, or homeless, have made me think better of it. Instead, please enjoy these micropoems I've recently shared on Twitter.

2000 Years Later

Golden trays
Gleaming in candlelight;
Doves diving like hawks
Through intertwined rings
On scarlet cloths.

Church Coffee
Better than most.
Random black guy
Sits at piano in hospitality room
Sings, "It will never fade away,"
And plays like water
Flowing over stones.

Pinewoods

Silver smoke
Caresses each slim needle
And rises on
To join the silver moon.

copyright 2011

Butterflies Aren't So Poetic After All

Hubby and I are kind of addicted to "Bones." We know how unrealistic it is, but the interaction among the characters has us hooked. So we were watching the other night when a butterfly hunter (lepidopterist?) discovered a corpse that butterflies had been feeding on. Kind of a shocking revelation for watchers who thought butterflies ate only nectar from the bowls of flowers, I'll bet. Anyway, it reminded me of this poem I had written several years ago:

 The Tangerine Flower

 Saucer-large and beautiful,

 It rested on the dirt path

 Worn by years of deer-hooves

 Through the Kiamichi Mountain woods,

 Hundreds of tiny petals

 Quivering as if in gentle breeze.

 It would have looked at home

 In Hawaii or the Amazon--

 In Oklahoma it made us pause.

 Who brought it here,

 Where only deer and hikers walked?

 A hopelessly lost Teleflorist man?

 One more step for a closer look,

 And the blossom exploded,

 Petals flying away in pairs

 As hundreds of small, bright butterflies

 In panic rose and left behind

 The pile of dung on which they fed.

copyright 2011

April Evening--For Reasons We Never Dreamed

An elderly friend of mine (I can say that because she's even older than I am) was left with impaired ability to use the entire right side of her body when she suffered a stroke--ironically during surgery that was supposed to help prevent them. But her sense of humor was intact, and her story about learning to put on her panty hose was laugh-till-you-cry funny. She loved this poem with its over-the-top alliteration because she taped it to her bathroom mirror and read it aloud every morning until she learned again to pronounce her S's. When I wonder if my work is worthy, I remember her and this poem and realize that sometimes the poems we doubt most wind up being our best work for reasons we never dreamed.

April Evening

Something in a soft spring night
Whispers possibilities--
Perhaps the sound of splitting seeds
Shooting through the soil,
Or silent step of summer coming
Soft upon the soaring moon.

copyright 2011