NPM 2018: Absent (Day 30)

Well... I forgot about the 28th. I suppose I could post two poems right now but I just don't have the emotional energy, and I already wrote three haikus this month. So here you go. One poem, written on the spot, to finish out National Poetry Month. Thank you to all who read my work. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you'll be back to read again next year (or whenever I decided to blog again.)

Absent

Under a tree
shaken by wind
Across an empty table
with empty hands

In the shape of
nothing
Known by the color
of nothing
She said
I will leave this place
and I will be new
with the first step
And the wind
laughed
The wind talked back
at nothing
Because she
was already gone

NPM Day 22 {Winter Resurgence}

Winter Resurgence
December 19, 2016

shivering
under the moon that night

it blinked down
like a veiled eye

i said
i can be brave
when i can’t feel my hands

shivering
under the glitter trees

where berries frost
and disappointments freeze

i said
i killed a wolf
you just killed a man

NPM Day 16 {Hours in Eternity}

A poem for Easter. A break from the norm with some simple rhyming, and also a break from the norm because I try not to do holiday poems but whatever. I feel what I feel. I do what I want.

Hours in Eternity
April 16, 2017

Darkness willows down
and settles itself
like a cape of cloud
unsettling all else.
The sycamore tree
where you redeemed
a man shrouded
by his greed
trembles and fades
in shadows now
as thunder breaks
the sky aloud.

You are the one
we've waited for
to fight the darkness
and win the war.
And long ago
when you lived
among the dust
only to give
away your life
we couldn't know
what waiting still
you would bestow.

This blackest night
after death's display
calmed the hate
once set ablaze.
Your followers
fell in despair
believing you had
abandoned them there.
And in your time
they waited one day
while here and now
we still wait and pray.

But these are hours
in eternity,
in time you've claimed
to set us free.
Kept in darkness
I watch and wait
holding the hope
you illustrate,
and knowing forever
I would wait for you,
even without knowing
when the light shines through.

NPM Day 14 {In the same ditch}

In the same ditch
April 5, 2017

These are images of a misunderstanding,
I try to write them down in notes but
I just keep seeing myself sitting on a rock
all cringes and winces and perplexity.
It's a real thing, what I've done for my enemy,
the sleepless hours spent scavenging
for something to win you over.
Nobody asked me to celebrate your birth
or offer you kindness, or even smile
in your general direction--especially
since you apparently don't understand me.
I did it anyways, hoping you'd grow
to respect me, even from afar.
But understanding is not friendship
nor is friendship understanding, like
two weeds just growing in the same ditch.
And I know I'm not a weed but I think
perhaps you are, taking up all this space,
stifling me and stealing my sunshine
and pushing me into the rocks where I sit

and now I cannot get this stupid look off my face.

NPM Day 6 {Vicious Grace}

Vicious Grace
December 7, 2016

Belief has given power
where none was found
or could be made,
and we hold it at arm’s length,
pausing to receive
a gentler truth
we might pass on.
But there is still
grief in this voice
and there is still
anger waiting in the dark
and still
a vicious grace.
It comes out in all our words,
it blinds the weak
and rattles nerves,
and still for all our trembling
and that which we give away,
written in dusty margins
or tucked in a lover’s coat pocket,

we still believe.