Tag: Lost Kite

Dear Holly,

12 Comments

Epilogue

A fog of days, my log of time,
grows roots, branches into shoots,
forms pods heavy with seeds.

One seed holds the nights
I swayed under the back porch light,
one too many glasses of merlot.
My sons slept, their faces like orbs
glowing from the shadows of their beds.

Another seed spoons with the afternoons
I napped away the warm hours,
head slung back on the couch,
my boys sitting crisscross applesauce
on the floor, watching
an endless banner of cartoons.

A third is filled with mornings –
I toss them onto the soil,
and they uncoil from the earth
bearing the fruit of moments to be relived,

But when the seedcases burst,
the new days blend into the shaded
dreams of the past.
***

Visit Holly’s Lost Kite to read her fabulous poem about a person’s view of the present.

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Jo and I are happy to announce the inaugural issue of ouroboros! We’re proud of this magazine, and have enjoyed putting it together very much. Please visit, and revel in its awesomeness.

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If I haven’t responded to your blog posts lately it’s because I’ve been working on the magazine with Jo, and also because of the collaborative issue coming up at qarrtsiluni, edited by Dana and Nathan. So don’t kick me off your blogroll, or your googly reader, I’ll be back, promise.

A response poem to Holly

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Dear Holly,

Mystic

Stand still long enough in the present
moment, and Border Town springs
to life, a mirage of mirrored souls
strolling down Main Street amid a sea
of glass-front shops. Twenty-four hours
a day, they say, it may appear,

sometimes as near to you as a pear
in a bowl, a still life given as a present
we open by breathing, forgetting the hour-
hand, the minutes, the seconds that spring
to life in a primordial sea,
a briny home, birthplace of our souls.

Border Town, Edge City, we don’t know it by a sole
name; a phantom place appearing
as Atlantis, tendrils of sea
anemone fingers waving the present
tense in our faces, until the spring
that winds us loosens, a slack Slinky in our

chest that slows the hour-
glass sands. We plant the soles
of our feet, grow roots, soak up spring
water until openings appear,
inner floodgates that present
a view to the hidden city of Eternal Spring.

It’s a Shangri-La we thought we’d never see –
conjured countless times at happy hours,
downing gin and tonics to wash away the presence
of black marks on our mortal souls.
It’s like wind in the trees, or peering

into a well, fed with a spring
meandering from underground seas.
A cavern in the ribcage, it once appeared
to us as the cauldron of a witching hour,
but now has become our sole
mio, a sunny bow on a wrapped present.

Time is an unfurling spring, a malleable hour
in which we see the yards of our souls
uncurling, appearing to us as our own present.

***

Holly (Lost Kite) and I have been responding to each other’s poems in what has become a series. Here is her poem.

The prompt this week at RWP was to collaborate on a prompt, and then mix up the prompts to write a poem. I’ve got to admit that although I contributed to the prompt, I chose to collaborate by responding to Holly’s poem.

A response to a poem by Holly

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Dear Holly,

The buttons on my sweater
strain at the thread, promise to bare
my heart, leave me unfettered

in a world of burly, leather-
clad men who stare
at the buttons on my sweater.

I’ve never been a ‘come-hither’
kind of woman–I’d rather
my heart stay unfettered.

One night of heated touch on feathered
pillows, and my fingers close with care
the remaining buttons on my sweater,

now tense from coming together.
I doubt I could ever prepare
my heart to leave me unfettered,

to open up its folds, consider
taking up the dare¬
to loosen the buttons on my sweater,
to freely bare my heart, unfettered.

***

I love playing around with forms. This one is a villanelle. Thanks, Holly, (Lost Kite) for the great image of the straining buttons, and for the idea to use the image as a metaphor for internal changes.