Belated Words

Write On!

Tag: poems poetry

  • September

    The chickadee does his cling and swing around

    the cones of timely opening bracts, the nuthatch

    his deliberate descent down the chunky barked pine,

    the arrogant jay loudly struts and flits about,

    as in a panic, as if to say, “Something is coming,

    something is coming!” But, that’s just his way.

    Three days of rain washed heated, thicken air

    to leave a cooled exhalation; an air thinner,

    more amiable than summers overly sweet cordial.

    A cathartic breeze rippled leaves, still green,

    exciting them with anticipation of float flight,

    of modeling the new season’s gaudy plumage,

    of wind scurries that will tumble and rasp them

    across their kin scrapping cellulose flesh away

    to dry fragility…..each to its veined identity.

  • scars

    Daylight, unforgiving and true,

    caught my hands at ease, flat,

    unflatteringly flat, upon my knees.

    Loosely applied over blue-veined

    rivers and tendon ridges, a pliant

    skin reveals a history of scars:

    puckered, punctured stars, sliced

    crescents, rude tears and gouges

    all ungulate in a lighter hue over

    blue-veined rivers and tendon ridges.

    A skinscape of a crazed topographer;

    a delineation of years of labor,

    of incidences with sharp edges,

    of inabilities, and worst, inattention,

    of flailing arms and careless hands;

    hands with slender fingers

    better spread across opened pages

    gently tapping, counting, calling out the joy.