Recycling

The first comes before dusk
as children settle in for sleep
and dishwashers cycles engage

Clink, clink, clink –
bottles rattling –
it’s garbage night.

Black bandana covering hair,
he sports a neatly trimmed beard
and red fleece jacket – appearance

not out-of-place in the upscale
neighbourhood, only his wheels –
blue cart, brimming with bags

one dog perched on the basket,
another settled below – he collects
returnables from blue bins – recycling.

Chatters as he goes, offers a “do you mind?”
to homeowners puttering on front lawns,
nods to passersby, dogs silently watching.

Then later, as windows darken behind
drawn curtains, and the noise of traffic
fades to a minimum, comes another

Clink, clink, clink –
bottle rattling –
it’s garbage night.

Hopeful

 

Curious by nature,
and drawn by hope
we push forward

spring ourselves
from the mud-mired
traps of psychological
undoings

focus on a horizon
where sunrises
and sunsets
offer glimpses of glory

optimist and pessimist
alike, daring to believe
that the beckoning future
bears equal promise.

(This poem started with a few lines scribbled in the middle of the night.  To see the writing process, visit me at One Woman’s Quest II.)

Appetite

The initial spoonful –
salted caramel cool –
consoles bitten tongue,
slides down burning throat:
appeasement for churning gut.

Each spoonful savoured
sweetness countering bile,
dark chocolate shavings
as bittersweet as the emotion
being pushed down, buried

Bruised by conflict,
words ineffectual,
ice cream an unworthy
compensation, cravings
turn to salty reprieve.

Paper Pushing

I am contributing!

Are these lessons not
abundance – success?

Authorities are dissatisfied;
want me back in the game,
insist disability has an end –
analyze me to depletion
their plans shutting me down,
unforgiving –

Encouragement is called for,
and hopeful help,
something to prod progress

This bureaucratic tapping
turns on me,
creativity breaks down.

 

Cryptic

Is the writing on the wall so cryptic –
graphic images depicting rage,
flames of dissonance,
young men bleeding at their own hands
compassion incapacitated.

A sad awakening for a society fixated
on rights and privileges, dominating
culture to the exclusion of nurturing
humanity, preserving lives.

How can we continue to closet
our children’s pain – their vitality
oozing – hopelessly abandoned
by morality’s shelter?

It is the wall, not the spatters
of blood upon it,
which needs amending –
adolescent minds too tender
to wade through the cryptic messages
of priorities so divided.

Night Calls

A shrill note
pierces night’s curtain –
an insistent, pestering alarm

Is it loneliness
that motivates the caller –
the need for a warm body
to calm her feathered fears
or a throaty hum to lull her?

Or is this an infant cry,
a hunger for nourishment
anxious in separation
waiting for mother’s
regurgitated assurances,
father’s watchful stance.

An onerous honk
breaks through
the high-pitched peep
and then, as
warmth wanes
a softer, sweeter
melody presents
followed by
a laughing trill

avian pleasure
prefacing night’s slumber.

Mortality

Death came for me
in that year of awakening
before numbers doubled
and puberty banished
autonomy – it knocked.

Peace accompanied certainty
as I lay, motionless in the water’s
depths, surprised at the absence
of panic, of struggle, a resigned
surrender overtaking me.

Light beckoned and a harmonic
chorus, like the whisper of angels
intoned  : Be strong,and
Know you are not alone,
before l lost consciousness,

And when I came to, sopping wet,
dry land beneath me, the softness
of death’s light, and the voice
of Heaven’s choir remained
etched in my soul’s memory.