Weekends at cottage
we’d linger over coffee,
dew sparkling on primroses
How we’d race to the lake
laughter emerging
from cool depth
Flowers scowl now
Lake’s chill hardened
Do you wait for me
in the eternal darkness?
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. Image my own)
Tiger’s eye
reminds me of youth,
how you remarked:
“Save it for luck!”
before brushing aside
my unruly hair…
one last time.
Found you again
decades later,
sipping tea
in a corner café,
dropped the marble
in your saucer,
your smile
bridged the years.
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson, this poem edited. Image my own)
(Hi all. This post was pre-scheduled. I have turned off comments. We are currently coming to terms with the loss of a close family member. Will visit when I can, but likely be off for a bit.)
He fills the home
with sweetness –
serenades their love –
while she picks away
at every gesture,
imagining subterfuge
His floral words
only serve to poke
doubts – she reads
between the lines
of ornamental landmines
He lights candles
to set a mood,
but she is already
planning a funeral –
her wrung out heart
unwilling to fall.
His cadence is shallow –
these are familiar waters
He’ll swear the addiction
saves him from madness
Ignore the wrenching
pain in my heart…
leave to find his next fix,
another page in misery’s tome.
(Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson.
Image my own)
Summer yearns
sun burning
water cooling
life affirming
longing for love
I would hold you there
in those days of youth
when relationship
donned mystery
and fear shrouded
the path
But Autumn reigns now
a time for letting go
a time for turning
back clocks – time
lost in a mere blink
on the shores
of our story
And soon Winter
when I will knit
our memories
into cozy dreams
and while away
the frosty mornings
sipping from the cup
of moments lost.
(Eugi’s Weekly Prompt is : Autumn. Image my own)
Quest for independence
born of familial dysfunction
led me down a path of dissent
Compromise, I believed
was toxic, swore against
the brutality of submission
Need no one,
depend on no one
have nothing to lose
Overlooked the joy
of interdependence –
an alien concept
Chose a lonely path,
a straggler destined
never to belong…
(Image my own)
How long the soil
housed tiny souls, pleas ignored –
crimes leave footprints
Plant a rose for each child
blood red to mark evil’s path.
(Image my own. Poem borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson)
Burn the love letters
watch as each quaint lie curls
sham interrupted –
betrayal’s intricacy
scatters amongst the embers.
(Image my own)
Natural light preferable
to artificial – not the harsh
fullness of noonday sun
but softly filtered rays –
luxurious…
inviting
Love too, should be subdued,
gentle as a zephyr –
not mythical, but yielding…
mindful
not worshipful nor boastful
but comforting…
warm
I am waning light
the mistral wind wafting
no longer a force of nature
but smoke, spiralling
vanishing into non-existence
And yet,
even as shadows spread
I yearn – heart
beating true
not lost,
not forgotten,
but withdrawn…
humbled
passion mellowed
by years of constructing walls –
grit and tar –
scar’s long buried
save the limping gait
of a ghost.
(Even Ghosts Yearn first appeared here in July, 2018. Image my own.)
(Warning: this poem discusses the effects of sexual assault, and may be disturbing to some readers.)
Back and forth I travel, searching
for her – retrace every bend, curve,
detour – back to the water, the sand,
the beach where I lost her…haunted
by velvet brown eyes – bedroom eyes,
they told her, men with greedy loins,
calculating – I lost her to the lure of
alcohol, to the pounding beat of drums
in those smoky corners so far removed
from the purity of our dreams…
It’s been an arduous journey, some days
so lost in the daze of forgetting; I cycle
back, memories of manhood exposed
egos craving stroking, learning
what men wanted, learning to numb
disappointment with fast-talk
and all-nighters, suppressing tears
discovering that words hold no promise
and water is deep, and going within
is a dark, foreboding place, and worth…
is shrouded by the discovery
that the father she adored was not
as we’d thought, and that this primal
urge for mating was a trap….
designed to eradicate beauty,
not enhance it…
I need to find her,
hold her afloat in sacred waters,
help her feel the healing light
of a thousand women’s hearts
all bleeding as one,
all tainted by the same
convoluted messages –
that lust is sinful and copulation
a man’s domain, and that in order
to be espoused, she must forgo
her nature – tame the wild
settle…
but as much
as I travel these lonely roads,
I cannot find her, the traces of
her innocence washed away
by the tides…lines now
on this aged face
If you see her, please
hold her close…
hold her until the beauty
of her being is solid knowing
and the shame vanquished
Hold her till she understands
the light she was born to be.
( Wayward Daughter first appeared here in February, 2017, and was published in the anthology: We Will Not Be Silenced: The Lived Experience of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault…, by Indie Blu Publishing, 2018. This version is edited. I am submitting it for my weekly challenge: roads. Art my own.)
One Woman's Quest 