Lamb on the Lam

Twenty minutes on the clock
The face of my free spirit
Against the window pain
Of my working soul
Looking out to the forest
Through subjected eyes
Would jump through the pane
And frolic like a spring lamb
But the wolves of hunger
Snarl at dreams on the lam
And keep me punching in
And punching out
Penned inside a body
Enslaved by brick walls.

Stay the Night

56 degrees is a thaw of heart
To tree frogs getting an early start
Sighing over shiny water
Waiting for a moonlit lover.

Fog hovers near the river
Slowly dancing with her giver
Long hair curling with the music
Flowing through the undercurrent.

The sun unwilling to lose this sight
Holds on to both the edges of tonight
Onto the east the moon shines over
Onto the west the pink spreads under.

Into this glory I am cast
Would this mud could hold me fast
But on I trudge about my business
Far removed from the art of living.

Scamps and Jesus

From thoroughbred racehorses to donkeys!

Go figure.

From enhanced excitement and frantic frustration

To funny fiascoes and eclectic emotions.

Is this indicative of a downhill slide on the ladder of life?

I think not.

Here I might find tranquility,

Find joy,

Find Jesus.

By Trudy Jo Watkins

Old Lady of the Woods

Bright and Empty Space

The white page is the light

When I have nothing left to say

The black letters

Little birds that fly away

The two together bound

Of gentler thoughts made

A cage of unruliness

Where fears are played

Until submitted to paper

Perched in sleep

Silenced prayers

My soul to keep

My fingers turn another page

The light is bright

And empty space

Sunflower

one

sun

a world

united

living cohesion

an expansion of creation

wave of wonder to concretion from a word spoken

patterned paternity in maternal matrix of hanging gardens hinged by spacetime

seen in single spiraling galaxy of sunflower seeded Fibonacci sequence pollinating one honey drone's ancestral tree

Prompted by Verse First ~ Fibonacci Poems at Poets United and for love of numbers.

Inside the Hourglass

Time heals all wounds

But mortal ones.

Immortal ones

transcend time

Repeating the beating

Until karmic pawn released.

For Love of Place

For love of place
Where a baby garter snake consumes an earthworm
Where the newt and desert toad wrestle and roll
Where the Triops is awakened by rain
Where the sunflower and globemallow grow
Where the maligned thistle hosts hummingbirds
And ladybugs and twenty other species
Where mated ravens swoon from the sky
Where the coyotes raise pups in the gulch
Where packrats construct prickly pear barricades
Where the chickens held their own free range
Where the bobcat pads
Where potatoes and carrots grew sweet in mountain dirt
Where a house of freedom was built
Where thunder rocked the roof
Where the stars tell stories
Where silence speaks
Where memories sleep and time forgets us
Where was our home
For love of place.

Anaphora

The American Nightmare

The American nightmare
Begins with a dream
And ends with foreclosure

Is a beautiful mind
Sent to school
For a dumbing down

Is a horn of plenty
Made of nothing
But corn

Is purchased
With the wages
Of two or three jobs

But that is okay
We have always been
Hard workers

From the time
We were captured
Or indentured

And not much has changed
We still have it made
In our first world

Though most everything
Is now made
In China

Where I would venture
To compare blades they use
With the ones they sold me

In American markets
Of mediocrity
And planned obsolescence

Where the trash piles up
And overflows landfills
Where nothing can grow

Polluted plots
Not fit to build
A home on.

Contents Under Pressure

They are but balloons

Inflated with anger

Afloat with bloated indignation.

Would they could pop and spew

Foul contents on he who holds their strings,

Except that I am caught in the middle

Juggling the bedpans and emesis basins.

Black Wing Conspiracy

Why ravens are not here I do not know.
The crows reside in Oklahoma
Aloof avian shadows
Curious but pretending not to notice,
Not like the bumptious ravens
Who introduce themselves
Dropping snowballs on your head.

Reserved and studiously shy
Crows are harder to get to know
But I will try like a raven.
For it is my code to crack
This interspecies lack
Of communication.

My Rosetta Stone
A shiny polished rock
Thus far deciphered
Reveals, I am certain,
That a family of ravens
Is not an unkindness;
A clan of crows
Is not a murder.

At least not of me,
For a raven saved my life one day
Or marked me for another world.
What a crow one day
Will say or do . . .
My soul awaits.

A Racehorse, A Barn Owl, and I

Fog descended on the track

In early morning deviation from the delta

Sudden coming with galloping hooves

Enveloping eardrums with equine pounding 

As all other sounds were muffled by gray mist

And my own quickened heart beat

As vision obscured without warning

And ground underneath disappeared in cloud

And a racehorse and rider took flight

At the exact moment a barn owl did alight

On the rail

Our only tie to earth that for a moment

A racehorse, a barn owl, and I left behind.

Bruneulogy

My dog is dead

By senility led

To wait for me in the road.

My lightened load

Not having to put him down

Does not relieve soul's frown 

Or cause hope to bloom

In this morning gloom

That in deafness he didn't see

That he soon would not be

Waiting longer for me there,

But in another place somewhere.

And if my best friend ain't there,

I don't need to go.

           

The Crone Knows

The maiden does not know
What she does not remember,
But when she recognizes in a man
His power to move the earth
Out from under her feet
It begins to come back to her.
Maiden, mother, crone.

The mother known
Does not have time to remember
For she is consumed with
The procreation of children,
An artistic madness to produce
Works of art in her own image.
Maiden, mother, crone.

Children grown with children of their own
With children of their own
The crone knows
And babbles incomprehensible mysteries
Into the void of understanding
Between her and her caretakers
Who mistake her malady
For the dementia of old age.
Maiden, mother, crone.

Now

It comes
One last breath
And does not remember
Birth, the first breath taken,
Or all the breaths in between.
It takes us from breath to breath
Whether we notice or not and teaches us
From cradle to grave there is nothing to learn,
For knowing is neither created nor made it just is
The weft and warp of worlds woven or unwound around bodies.


Prompted by Verse First ~ One Word At A Time at Poets United.

Submission

Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice,
A booming dirge of angelic warning!
To a soul of indecision left to choice,
Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice,
Any direction given is a cause to rejoice.
Freedom of will begins with mourning
Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice
A booming dirge of angelic warning.


Submission, a triolet.
Shared in the Poetry Pantry.

Duir Way

This door to the west

Might leave me refreshed

Or dead in my tracks

If wisdom attacks

In form of the serpent

Before I repent

But to just walk this ley line

I would lay my all on the line

And believe it all for the best

To seek this sweet rest

And be reborn not in the future

But in the past

Having come the full circle

At last.

Rumex acetosella, Where the People Are

I searched for you

Half the morning

And in frustration asked

The question in my mind

"Where are you?"

And you replied

"Where the people are"

And sure enough

Sheep sorrel

Your tendency to domestication

Like your namesake

Shined through this wilderness

And by a campfire ring of rocks

I found you

Clinging to disturbed soil

Of where your people trod.

Oxalis stricta and I

Potted with peace lily

You

Yellow wood sorrel

Wild weed sowed

Sunny in windowsill

Reaching skyward 

Erect with pickle pods

I

From chaos

Escaped to cafeteria

And iceberg lettuce

Flavorless 

Imagining how 

We two souls

Without the confines

Of your pot

And my sterilized halls

Would have room to grow

You

Enough to share your flavor

With my salad and

I

To resonate your gift

Of freedom to the sky

But like a good little shamrock

You will stay on your sill

And when the sun sets

Fold your heart felt leaves in sleep

And I will clock out

And go home without you.

Reflecting on a Moment

Riding shotgun again with my brother,
Wind blows hair on my face to smother.

The hot rod's candy-apple-red paint
Makes me shiver and feel faint.

The rumble of the powerful motor
Makes me thankful it's not yet over.

But he's 66 and I'm 69 years
The nostalgic beauty is all in the tears.


By Old Lady of the Woods
Trudy Jo Watkins

Merry Mint and Savory

Between January gloom
And March bloom
Is February
A time to jump the gun
Get a head start on spring
And outrun all that is sedentary
For no false start here
In any freezing year
Can diminish my merry
Mint and savory
Ice palace of thawing hope.