A little poem about patience.
sunrise
to do the same thing over and again
expecting a different outcome
is sometimes called insanity
i call it hope
To share with friends over at the wonderful dVerse community.
Category Archives: hope
sunrise
Blaze
Not so long ago, I inherited a coat that had belonged to a far-flung relative. I learned a lot about him from what I found in the pockets. The more I learned, the more I appreciated the man. I wrote this villanelle in his honor.
Blaze
The coat is surely from his east coast days
those years in Boston no one talks about
when he untied the strings a thousand ways.
I find a matchbook from the nightclub BLAZE
unopened in a pocket – without doubt
the coat is surely from his east coast days.
I think of him on stage, the thick-breathed haze
above his head and how the crowd would shout
when he untied the strings a thousand ways,
so far from home, a farm boy in that maze
of all that drugs and rock n roll could spout.
The coat is surely from his east coast days
and now I smile to think of all the ways
he honored her along that sacred route
when he untied the strings a thousand ways.
I treasure every unstruck match that says
some people love home best by getting out.
The coat is surely from his east coast days
when he untied the strings a thousand ways.
The end of the world
A sonnet for threatening days. And for hope when all seems lost.
To share with friends over at the dVerse Poets Pub.
The end of the world
There is a dreadful quickening tonight
upon the air – it runs its fingers through
my corn-stalk hair and beckons me into
the open yard to watch the growing might
of wind and cloud. This mesmerizing sight
of grey fists dipping earthward blocks my view
of all that I had trusted to be true
forever, whipping in the pea-green light.
A telephone is ringing somewhere in
the house – a warning, maybe, from a friend –
but I stand still, enthralled. This overcast
horizon has been mine before. Where thin
despair birthed hope. I trust the world will end
three times at least before I die at last.
beginning
a poem about belonging
beginning
there were fifty revelers in the pool
gay and unfiltered bodies bobbing like
corks pressed down until the wine bubbles forth
and i didn’t know how to stop the pain
of their belonging watching how all these
fabulous souls were wrapped up together
waving like a coral reef and i waved
too one hand on my top button wishing
i had never come longing to jump in
What if….?
I wrote this song a couple of years ago, and included it in my 2011 chapbook “answers like socks.” The video has my performance of the song, together with photos taken in Nova Scotia and right here in Elkhart, Indiana. The double rainbow is not a fake! This heartfelt post goes out with love and with sorrow. And with a lot of hope.
I am a lonely Jonah
Running from the word of God
I got swallowed by a whale for
All the junk I’ve handed on.
I washed up on the seashore
Where I saw the ones we’ve bound
In a trail of lonely exiles
Off the road for being found
What if everything was different
What if all that I had told you was wrong?
What if grace was never rationed
What if love was never dammed
Turning all our anxious grasping
From a fist to an open hand
What if everything was different
What if all that I had told you was wrong?
It’s easy when you’re younger
To save your soul by casting stones
Someday that cupboard will swing open
You’re gonna meet those laughing bones
What if everything was different
What if all that I had told you was wrong?
There’s a stirring in my spirit
I’ve got hope for what I see
Cause even stumbling love casts out fear
And the truth is gonna set us free
What if Jesus wore a rainbow
What if God wiped out the line
What if Christians asked forgiveness
From the ones we’ve left behind.
What if everything was different
What if all that I had told you was wrong?
What if Jesus wore a rainbow
For the ones we’ve left behind.
When the well has run dry
When the well has run dry
it comes without warning.
The tongue swells in your cheek,
thick and livid, so that
your words no longer speak.
When the well has run dry,
you curse Providence for
this damming of the source
of such early growth. You
rail. Yet it is, of course,
when the well has run dry
that the real work begins.
This is the place you give
yourself to the long task
of learning how to live
when the well has run dry,
the daily love affair
with hardy words you kiss
into unlikely soil
to bloom up from the dust.
Love fell laughing
Love fell laughing into the gulf
between our feet. We burned the lies
to stay warm, those that had lashed us
together, hobbled. Some saw us
as one splendid flesh, to engulf
their own griefs. They were wrong What lies
in us is a hope that belies
all expectation. For both of us
we owe our lives to this new gulf
the gulf, hard-won, that lies between us.
Posted to share with friends at dVerse Poets Pub.
Maybe we all exist
Maybe we all exist
only to inflict pain
on the ones that we care
the most about, without
even being aware;
maybe we all exist
only to light the sky
and fill each other’s dreams.
Neither one seems true. From
these desert years, it seems
maybe we all exist
to each other only
when we chance through the sieve
which asks our heart for “yes”
where it can only give
“maybe.” We all exist
firstly to be ourselves;
willing to stand alone
and trust our heart’s desire
to plumb their own unknown.
Hope Barn
(a rhyme royal)
A hundred Chinese lanterns cross the sky
with whimsy as the sun melts in the west.
Here in the field, our hostess wipes an eye
then throws her arms around each welcome guest
to whisper secrets she has cherished lest
they disappear like mist. She is alive
tonight, amazed to see such crowds arrive.
(for the beautiful Hope Barn, who holds her history with grace and dignity)
Penguin Poems 