There Is Beauty In Small Things

There is beauty in small things

if we would stop to see

Pause upon a snowflake

with its fragile symmetry

Cherishing the commonplace

bestows it with sublime

There is beauty in small things

if we would take the time.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Words Count with MZ

On the Brink Of

We were ten or eleven

Still just kids but

almost not

Young enough to play on the playground

Old enough to notice

(not quite hidden in the woods)

girls stealing smokes

and making out with boys

We were at that awkward stage

One minute playing with Barbies

the next, examining our silhouettes,

waiting for them to look like Barbie's

It was a time of imagined possibilities

and dreams smashed in linoleum school hallways

On the brink of we didn't know what

Our lips kissed only by Bonne Belle strawberry

we practiced by kissing ourselves in the mirror

I suggested (jokingly)

(Why was my heart beating so madly?)

that maybe we should practice on each other

"Gross!" you said, and I

didn't miss a beat, "Yeah, I know, right?"

and that was that.

The next year you had a boyfriend

and we lost touch

But I still remember those on the brink days

and your freckled nose.

 submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

This Poem Is Red Lipstick, Schrodinger's Cat, and Dandelion Fluff

source

This poem is red lipstick.
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.
This poem is dandelion fluff.

Crimson lipped attention-grabber
Painted patterer
Beautiful emptiness
Nothing to say but
oh so lovely
This poem is red lipstick.

Perhaps it's here
Perhaps it's not
Maybe it lives
Maybe it dies
Study it; it changes
This poem is a metaphor
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.

Breathe and it's gone
Its seeds planted everywhere
or nowhere
Catch it on the wind
or blow it away
This poem is dandelion fluff.

This poem is red lipstick.
This poem is Schrodinger's cat.
This poem is dandelion fluff.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Hannah's Sunday Mini-Challenge, Boomerang Metaphor Poems

Stairs

Behold the stairs which felt our tread

Carpet frayed and thinning

Threadbare stairs which we walked down each day

and up each night, the very way

Stairs on which our footfalls fell

Our secrets they would never tell

These stairs have seen us through our pasts

The only evidence that lasts

When voices still, when bodies' lust

of flesh and bone has turned to dust

Though wood is worn  and cloth unspun

These stairs are here and we are gone.

submitted for Magpie Tales, Number 228
and Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

Never Forget

source

It never really goes away, does it?

Some mornings I wake up and forget

for a little while

But sooner or later

the skipped heartbeat comes

and with it, the realization

that nothing has changed.

Constant companion

never invited but

arrived with suitcases nonetheless

establishing squatter's rights in the bloodstream.

We lie down at night;

it is the space between us.

We hold hands in the sunlight;

it is the shadow overhead.

We float in the ocean;

it is the undertow that pulls us out to sea.

We are never alone now

It is with us always,

lurking like a lie,

waiting to come crashing down

Crushing

us.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Sunday Mini Challenge, Claribel Alegria

A Woman Must Always Look Twice

A woman must always look twice
She must look first at what she sees
Then she must look deeper
She must read between the lines
on each face
She must look for subtext,
for subtleties
She must be alert
to the riptide
below the water's surface
or risk being carried out to sea,
drowned.

Yes, a woman must always look twice
She must look first at the smile
Then study the teeth
She must suss out
the impulse to rip her apart
She must know when she meets a wolf.

A woman must always look twice
She must first look ahead,
know where she is going
not get diverted by mazes or tricks
And she must look behind
She must be aware
of those trying to overtake her,
to run her over
or leave her naked and bleeding in the street.

A woman must always look twice
Even at another woman
She must protect what is hers
from her sisters,
her friends
who are themselves looking twice.

A woman must always look twice
when she looks in the mirror
Does she look pretty?
Does she look too pretty?
She must look at herself
Then she must look as another would look at her
She must assess the message in her clothes
in her hair, her make-up
Do her hips sway?
Do they sway like a woman's should
or like a whore's?
A woman must always look twice
at her body.

A woman must always look twice
A woman must always look twice.


submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Open Link Monday

The Lighthouse

photo by Margaret Bednar

The lighthouse keeper

climbs the stairs for the last time

Each step creaks-

bone and stair-

to the top and down again

The light

blinks its shine in the night sky

over a black and silent sea

"I am here"

"I am here"

it calls out to the emptiness

like the last firefly of summer.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Artistic Interpretations, Life On an Island and
Flash Fiction 55

In Praise of the Older Body

photo from The Body Is Not An Apology

Let us raise our voices

in praise of the older body

The body who has survived

insult, illness, and the indignities of the years

Praise

to the fragile thin skin

with its lines like poetry

written on its surface

Hallelujah

to the drooping boobs

hanging like water balloons waiting

for some mischief

Amen

to the no longer taut torsos,

hard and thin as wooden planks in their youth

Now soft, delicate dumplings,

yielding, giving pillows

Sing adorations

to the stretch marks

and the scars,

warriors' wounds,

earned and cherished

Hosanna

to silvery hair,

a glittering crown

atop the head of a queen,

full of knowledge and memories and wisdom

Glory be

to age spots,

the kisses of time,

to crows' feet and laugh lines,

birthed by so many smiles

Praise

to the body 

who is a work of art,

a work of life lived,

of love given and received

Let us raise our voices

as we raise our arms,

be they fat as Vienna sausages

or skinny as chicken wings,

in triumph 

and in praise 

of the older body.

Whale Hips

Whales have hipbones

though they no longer walk on land

The remnant of a past life

lingers

well beyond its usefulness

Perhaps this is analogous

to the love I still feel for you

and the hurt 

that

I haven't seen you

or talked to you

in decades

The past

imprints itself on the present

Vestigial feelings

Meaningless and wasted

Saved like an old sweater that no longer fits

but was once was so soft and warm

that you just can't give it up.

submitted for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads, Obscuring the Truth With Facts, Out of Standard