This woman always
Poured her cup
Full with fragrance:
Lavender, jasmine
And somedays
Roasting rooibos.
In passing one day
She whispered to me:
Be careful where
You steep your soul.
That boy there
Is acrid brine.
You don't want to
Make yourself
A pickle.
Monday’s prompt on dVerse was to wrote a quadrille (a poem 44 words in length) containing the word steep or any of its forms.
Link to dVerse prompt: https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/28/quadrille-72/
We spend our winters building hardened resistance
Through the routine of shoulder hunching and thickening blood
As gradually the filtered light that shifts
Across wood panels and kitchen tiles
Lingers into longer hours.
Without cognizance, we let fall
Our experiences, as a dog
Sheds its winter coat
Throughout
Each houseroom.
Leaving our
Convictions as paper scraps to be
Swept up with toast crumbs –
and our tear drops
for mopping.
Never knowing the
Featherweight
Of our skin
Until it is.
And we stand
Pondering
The swiftness of
Transformation.
This poem was written for the dVerse prompt given by Lillian on Tuesday to write a poem containing a form of the word shed. https://dversepoets.com/2019/01/22/shed-some-light-on-this-today/
Somewhere in this universe there exists an us
Laughing on the infinite shores of a thousand glittering diamonds
All bronzed skin and limbs under a late summer sun
And there you were
In glasses black and t-shirt blue
Cradling my spirit
In the embrace of your smile.
In the first five seconds that we met
I completely entrusted myself to you.
You stole the shirt
from off my back
when we were seven
(when we were seven)
as we played in the field.
You caught a butterfly
and pushed a pin
through its head,
slowly, wings beating.
Then tacked it to a mat
to peer at under your
Kmart scientist’s special scope
I had said no.
(I had said no).
Dinner called us home at dusk.
I shrugged on my grass-stained shirt
and you crumpled the butterfly
into your jeans’ pocket.
Your fingers leaving mud
that dried like blood
and crusted like pus
on the edge’s of your jeans’ pocket.
After the storm
And hounding waves,
The coastline changed.
I haven’t the memory
Of where rocks used to be
Or sand banks curved.
This boat has drifted
Further from shore.
In the mist, I peer
Over the edge to find
Sunken dark shadows and
A quivering reflection of myself.
The seagull’s long soliloquy
Echoes across a glass bay.
In my mind of fogged mirrors,
I squeak-rub clear patches
With my shirtsleeve
Only to catch my own eye.
Buoys scatter across the harbor.
I tie off my boat and follow,
Downward with my eyes,
The mucked chain
Toward its foundation,
Dissolving into darkness.
The dVerse prompt for today, provided by Anmol, is to write a confessional.
Some Sunday mornings
My bed stretches on endlessly to my door
I struggle to leave
I have everything and nothing to do
I eat my breakfast and am hungry again
I eat my lunch then it’s almost
Dinner and I must go to bed
I still have everything and nothing to do
I found you in a closet curled
and mopping up the dust
Now I've hung you to my bedroom wall
and framed you up in glass
To reminisce my summer youth
Peaks, valleys, gushing streams
And promise of adventure's future
Under snow and leafy green
Although somedays I cannot see
Beyond the sunset of tomorrow
For now I doze beneath your frame
And mountain dreams I borrow
This was written for a prompt by dVerse Poet’s Pub (link below) that I stumbled across today. The prompt was as follows: “So – here’s what I’m asking you to do today. Walk around your house and look at all the things hanging there: on walls, in closets, on your refrigerator door, etc. Pick something that “speaks to you” and use that as the basis for today’s poem.” This was fun! I look forward to more prompts 🙂
On the shores of infinite diamonds, we were
all bronzed skin and limbs,
under a late summer sun.
Ever gently a rose glow
caressing our eyes, saturated our world,
as light retreated beyond mountains.
On the shores beneath infinite stars, we were
all tender skin, twisted limbs,
surroundings obscured in the dark.
The rain came down on Seoul.
My soul it bathed and seduced.
For a sole wanderer far from home,
Seoul filled my sole soul with youth.
It’s raining today and I don’t want it to be. It’s a cold, dreary January rain and I want nothing more than for it to be snowing. I am deeply craving the quiet that comes with powdery snow, and the even deeper cold that comes with that snow. I am not quite sure why. I have always identified myself as a “summer person.” Despite the fact that I want it to be snowing, the current weather reminded me of this brief poem that I wrote some time ago while reminiscing about living in Korea. I lived there ten years ago.
Summer came early that year in Korea, bringing heat and heaviness to the air. The trademarks of summer that I was used to–blue skies, clear sunshine–were not there. Even on cloudless days, the sun was obscured by haze. It rained a lot in July, and even when the clouds left the sky, the sun was but a blurred glow, having the same effect as viewing a light through a frosted window. In those days I welcomed the rain. For a few years after I returned from Korea, hot and rainy summer days often flooded my mind with memories of my time overseas. All weather talk aside, I loved spending time in Seoul and would go back again in a heartbeat.
Although as I am writing this, it is not hot and humid, and is in fact January, and on top of that I want nothing more than two feet of snow, I still could not resist posting a blurb about summer rain in Seoul.
My Swelling Heart 