Sorrow

I catch your amber eyes across mine
Between subway stops & grating wheels
Your braided long-grey hair is
          A hornet's nest

Everyone shies away from your shadow 
Your dusty sandals & clothes showed 
where you have been -
         Scorched by sun

The train track greases by river bend
Gentle as slow butterfly
But nothing moves you, not a flicker       
        Sorrow is a bird

Hiding in your pouch
Too long, it has not flown
Too long, it has not eaten
       Yet it sings, hardy as cactus 

Leafless, spiny & spiky
Coloring your weathered hands 
Lost as your native land.        
       I wonder what grief 

has torn your eyes to silt & mortar? 
I wonder at the sound of your voice?  
Loud as gunfire?
       Or soft pebble falling in rain?
   
All too quickly, the station stop comes
The afternoon sun wrinkles
our faces as we all spring to our feet 
       except you 

       man with dead-stone eyes.
  



Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads - Inspired by title Sorrow by Claribel Alegria. I have not experienced a personal loss of my own family so I thought of viewing sorrow from a third person point of view.
and Poets United - Thanks for the visit ~  Happy weekend ~

Picture credit:  here

Two snapshots

I.   Flash Fiction 55 words

     She sits, pale-flustered on red-cushioned seat of train.

     Across her, young girls laugh merrily, bright in summer shirts, shorts & back packs.

     Day painting job smears a man's pants, boots & pony-tailed hair, silver white.

     A group of jellyfish is called a bloom or swarm.

     I move towards the next exit doorway, carried by tide.


II.  For Margaret's challenge - Life on an Island


     Is a slow drift of afternoon sands
     Is opening the oven to freshly baked bread
     Is watching boats meander, unheeding wind & sky

     Is dabbing the sun's colors on your cheeks
     Is making a list and tying it to a kite
     Is a lost world, filled with treasures no one can count

Overlooking "Teach's Hole" (aka Blackbeard)

By Margaret Bednar

Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads
& Poets United
Personal Notes:   The baby robins have hatched and my brother is recovering in his home after a bout with a rare disease ~  Thanks for your kind thoughts & prayers.

At midpoint, assessing my life

I.     For Poets United

Stitched on these pages
Are letters written to myself

Their delicate threads 
Mirror the seasons quickly passing by 

In a single knot 
My hands bound the white papers 

The past falls away like brown dry leaves  
Into summer downpour

I pick up my needle & yarn &
begin a new canvas of the people around me-

a young lady stops walking on busy street
& buries her face in pink rose, poking out from wire fence-

a man with long blond hair stands on crowded subway 
& writes furiously on his notebook, one arm around the pole-

two young children eating a slice of watermelon, 
their black eyes full of contentment-

and ....
      

II.    For Poetry Jam


I write 

on water:
You do not quench my thirst. 

Even on hot summer day
Even on last leg of long journey 
  
I untie

my shoes & kneel
inhaling space & silence

Even when the day is not ripe fruit 
Nor the night resplendent in moonlight

I write

on page:
Thirst is a seed I am planting today.



Posted for Poets United - Midweek Motif - Half the year
and Poetry Jam - Thirst

Picture credit:   here

One Sunday morning

Stitched leaves by Hillary Fayle

Dawn crouches slowly
& strikes each maple leaf
bell-chimed, 
frail as silky web,
each space, silver scar
each word is sepia
knotted by black threads
My fingers slowly unravels
until light
seeps
like tangerine
peeling flame & breath
flamboyant as peacock




Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads - Avant-Edge- A Sunday Challenge 
& Poets United - Thanks for the visit ~

A state of mind

                               “Dada is a state of mind” Spread from Fluxion Issue 4
                                featuring the work of LA artist and filmmaker Dennis Woodruff.



Just a veil 
windshield on my crown, I
am kissing a place full of mistakes 
you 
dozen steps behind
my butt 
Missing my shoes 
bridal stained,  there it is-
Without spectacular start up
My mind latching
into another 
Must be no justice 
no little teeth 
Wilting //
              Whizzing //
                                 Grinding//
Aboard, I 
navigate
To feathers belching.
Beehives gab like rainy rain.
The flower runs, a noisy car  
Fake summer,
Sway to the
Gown flying, cutting the hands of mannequin;
I am my wreath;
I'm missing legs
& lips 
& street life hell deep from mannequin so blue;
& fire backstabbing walls
& tithe, dis//
                    con//
                            nected thoughts//
The bus on frozen superhighway  
on graffiti mission for miles & miles
Impossible when
the shark reverses like dead sea.
There's no lamp sweeping of years 
Angel i //
               am//be// 
                              not//


Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Dadaism - I wrote randomly and added random poems and placed it in a DADA poem generator.  I edited it for smoother flow.

Picture credit:   here

Fragile

A robin's nest by our entrance walkway

Grace @ Everyday Amazing

Above branches, a robin sits 
On nest of 
twigs
Balancing on slender bough
Swaying with wind & light rain
A single rock 
                       thrown
A single storm
                       brewing
Can hurl the nest on ground below

What kind of faith does the robin have
to sit calmly 
to build a home from twisted twigs
to wait for blue eggs to hatch patiently

I think of my sis-in-law in ICU of Los Angeles hospital
awaiting word on the progress of my brother
In the last week
her world has spun
from sure footing to one of 

                   uncertainty,

                   akin to sea waves rocking the boat

My brother didn't asked why fate has struck him
with a rare disease, why God is testing the mettle of his faith-

In a brief wakefulness, he requested 
for the gregorian chants & latin prayers to play in the room
His fingers tap to the beat, reassured
by his religion, now an unshakeable anchor,     
before slipping once more to the drugs tubing

                  his throat, lungs, veins hooked to machines 

                  murmuring a tide, calming as distant shoreline-
  
Over my kitchen window 
I spy the mother robin's body
protectively covering tiny eggs

                 The sky stirs her wings
                 & orange-painted chest 
                 in contentment
      
                 Where does her faith spring from 
                 
There is no fear in her brown eyes
There is no doubt
that her labor will bear fruits                   

                         

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Kindly say a prayer for the complete healing of my brother, Richard Friend ~  Thank you ~

Inside his damaged heart

lies a ticking clock, 

winding so slow, dawn slumbers

above water's stillness

From my sister's album

Vietnam's national flower, lotus

You sit still, silent as lotus
Listening as frantic heart beats
Wash over you, fold & repeat
Nights are the worse, without notice

Pain strikes from your scarred heart, so blue
It etches your voice so faint, frail 
I hold phone close, deeply inhale 
As you thank me for calling you

Wishing you Happy Father's Day !!!

Posted for Imaginary Garden for Real Toads - Yeats' Octaves
and Poets United - Thanks for the visit ~
First poem - haiku
Second poem - Octave
The basic structure of this 8 line stanza is iambic tetrameter or pentameter (eight or ten syllable lines for those who do not feel comfortable working with meter), with the rhyme scheme:
a b b a c d d c. 

Bokavar, Tales from the story fires

June 1725

What runs in my blood
is deep love for this land with rolling meadows
& soothing river 

It is month of green corn, golden as sun
I remember my mother & grandmother's gnarled hands on soil
seeding and nurturing each corn stalk like precious
bread for tomorrow

I am a grown woman now (14 years old), with a husband
and a new baby
and the most beautiful patch of green corn

I walk back to my small cabin and carry my baby
out in the warm summer sun.

How beautiful he is
suckling my breast as we rest
under the sugar maple tree

I wish him to grow tall and handsome
as his father

I still recall the first time I saw him
Wheat yellow hair 
Eyes so blue as the sky
His skin so fair against my earthly color

His words, so strange to my ears
But his tongue, how swift to learn of my tribe's words
As he bartered fur & tobacco with my brother, Cunnawehala 

Israel, my husband, would be happy to see the baby now
He had gone after the baby's birth
to speak with Governor and that had been a full moon ago

I miss the chatter of neighbors and
spring bread dance with the arrival of baby
to thank the creator for the abundance of corn

A cluster of swans came into view
preening noisily by the meadow, their wings 
immaculate as dancing clouds

River of Swans, I muse
Their cacophony stirs memories of my own family

I long to speak to my grandmother and show her
the beautiful baby and inquire about proper name.

My son will be the first of many blessed children
I will stake our roots

Here, in this isolated meadow 
I am learning patience 
& price of love

June 2014

church bells chime
as i step up subway stairs
pedestrians amble like ants

under cherry tree, i inhale  

river tides, fearless as budding leaf 

Process Notes:   The title is from the book I was looking to buy but it is unavailable.  This is a short blurb:

She was a Shawnee girl who lived beyond white settlement. She fell in love with a Swedish trader named Israel Friend. Together they built a good life in the place known to the Shawnee as the "River of Swans."    Bokavar is the wife of my father's ancestor, Israel Friend (1690-1748).    

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Poetics - Family HiSTORY  - Growing up in the Philippines, I have a very unusual surname, Friend. I already knew my grand father is half-American.

In tracing my father's roots, I read that my ancestor came from Sweden,  Nicolas "Nils" Larsson.  He came to America in 1648, to trade tobacco and fur with native Indians.   The locals liked him and treated him as "blood brother" and called him "Frande" (meaning kinsman in Swedish).     Under English rule, his adoptive surname was anglicized to Friend. 

Israel Friend, the grandson of Nicolas "Nils" Larsson Friend, was also an Indian fur trader and interpreter, like his father Anders and grandfather Nils.   According to the Friend oral tradition, he married the daughter of an Indian Chief, Bokavar.   The Friends were Christian (Lutherans) and Bokavar, though a native American, also had an english name, Sarah.

The Israel F. Friend house was built in 1737 and is located near Bakerton,

West Virginia (USA) .The land was a gift to Israel from the Indian Chiefs of the Five

Nations with an addition of a regal grant from the Governor of Virginia.

Picture credit:   here

Dancing the rites of spring

Uprising

Violets are growing in my stomach

 "hip bump",
my dance instructor tells us-

I imagine myself a river
swooshing swiveling under golden sun

My legs are still droopy, filled with white 
pollen & tangled cello strings

I glide with the soul music
My cheeks flush with red coral reef 

"step back"
his feet guides us through dance steps-

My bones are watery
gorging on heat of drums, lost in sounds

I whirl 
without safety pins
without a jar of tokens 

my rib cage pink
with old ruffled lace & frothy skirt

"sway, sway",
he shouts above the din, his hips a flag waving-

And I do
with all the fervor of spring's electric dance



Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Sunday's mini-challenge, where I am hosting ~
Shared with Poets United

For the past month, I've been taking dancing lessons (line dancing, samba, etc) every Thursday 7-9 pm ~  Its been fun though the ladies are now persuading me to go dancing every Saturday night  ~  I prefer my laptop & reading poems for company, smiles ~  

Seeding the sky with rosemary

the idea grows on him:
these tiny fan-like leaves
are more bewitching than palest of flower 
crowns & wild red roses

imagine what the garden will look like -

dill, parsley, cilantro, rosemary
rising like foam
needles & stems billowing the grass
with fragrance of sea & mountains 

his dirt-stained hands plant fragile roots - 

tomato-spiced sauce
cracked-seeds flavoring
wine-drizzled broth mixed with vegetables 

anything is possible with herbs, he tells me

As I scribble words,
I imagine them growing sturdy
& fat as yukon gold potatoes.

This is stage of the herbs at our backyard.

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - My chef son just planted some herbs beside my roses & perennial blooms ~  He wanted to uproot my flowers for his herbs but I told him not to touch the red roses ~

Picture credit:   here