To the Budding Flower

(Prefer to hear it read aloud? Click here!)

Just a little taste of spring:

Hands jerking over rosebuds

Wheeling inside a weightless wind

The slender self would flood

 

Numbers, sunlit fall

Without winding, nor binding no

Not this kiss, for that’s all it is

A kiss and a thunder so

 

The flower smiles today

Before the morrow’s sunless yoke:

The higher they be howling

The sooner sets the stroke

 

And age, it cries out for the coy

For youth knows yet the blood,

and time the wisdom of the sleepless

knows the quiet of life caught in the bud.

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Stricken

Lately I am stricken

as the plots to dear and mortal earth do thicken—

kneel, kneel lest it all too readily quicken—

for like the desert winds of old Sahara,

it burns to know the subtle motions Terra

should pass me by to other eras.

 

Rage, rage the old man writes

yet dead is light at the sour sight

of youth so bitter cast, paralyzed by fright;

where is devotion to seek out age

where privilege become but flesh and cage,

and still the younger cry: engage, engage.

Forgotten Dreams

The old man glimpses ore

in earthen womb, the stricken glint

illuminates thought of youth’s gold score

which held him up as on a splint

until time bore that nothing more

than dreams existed in the dint

of nothing, wielded like a whore.

The Hive Jive

Bees are just a function of the hive
so is it soul then that keeps us from the pits?
Too bad we’re all burnt out before we’re twenty-five
if anybody listened we might even ease the fits
the drone game calls the learning curve jive
but even souls can’t fact acquit,
we’ll all shrive before we thrive
not in legion, but in whit.

Pollen

Pollen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world is filled with pollen–

a bloom of youth cast to wilderness

upon the breeze and berthed

within the roots of older things,

immovable objects time

withered for the show.

No highway through-way,

accumulations whiten the base

without ever touching soil, or soul–

light, oh god, where is the light–

the heady call of drifting lifeless hands,

a lightness in the weighted facets

breathless winds would howl.

Man, they say, the master of his own headwinds,

but each man floating high against the other

leaves no room to breathe.

We’ve choked it out.

Too young for nothing left to give

And Yet…

They called us children once

They called us children once.

Before eyes were windows

dappled in our fogged night,

dawn proud; unknowing

shadowed play between locked fingers.

They called us children once.

There came silence to the cries

when our skin learned its shape,

the mewling crescendo of fingertips

drumming our answer in the twilit backseat.

 

They called us children once.

Until we danced.

Warning: Winter Ahead. Image by Chris Galford.

* I realize in recent days I’ve not been the most prolific of bloggers. No Inside Idasia. No crafty banter. A brief smattering of poems, a Christmas photo, and little else. Well, I just wanted to let you know that will be changing with the new year. I’ve been out of town and out of state, and between family, friends, and a distinct interest in a little break, I’ve been having myself a pretty good vanishing act. Tomorrow I return to Colorado, however, and Monday things should resume their usual pace.

But with that, I wish you all a happy New Year! The old was crazy enough here – between finally publishing, between the move out of state, between all the kind support and friendly community you all have provided…I think the new will be hard-pressed to top it, honestly, but I wouldn’t mind a good surprise. I hope it has been the same for all of you, and thank you simply for taking the time to swing by my humble little corner of the blogosphere. It has meant the world!

Youth and Age

“You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”
~Douglas MacArthur

Excuse me while I step out for the day…I’ve got a birthday afoot you know. It seems silly, I think, to still see such celebration past the 21st…but c’est la vie. A birthday, after all, is often more for those around one than for the person himself.  I will go where the flow carries me. But in the meanwhile, I leave you all with a question…

What’s your own fondest birthday memory?

For the World’s Mothers

My own mother and I, featured here at my graduation.

Raise me up

From breathless sound,

The song you sing—life’s song—

The motions and the rhyme

Ring in lessons, tender

Borne on emerald winds

The flowering will always be remembered,

The bloom you brought

With hands held and patient eyes,

Even in depths of mathematical madness

Where children were not meant to play,

Even balancing worlds upon slim shoulders,

Step softly so little eyes won’t see and—

Ever, always watching you

Stir what might otherwise dwell

Hidden in the reeds.

* A special dedication for mother’s day – I know some other corners of the world have already had theirs, but the sentiments remain. For all those amazing women out there that put up with so much (I know we can be a handful)…here’s to you.

Experimental Haiku

My cousin's children, seen here at Christmas.

Youth. You smile as you

flutter off in crooked flight

spring storms—a notion.

Master or Mastered?

Master or mastered

youth drinks the twilight’s streaming—

spreads arms as wings in

fluttered flights

dreaming.