Yesterday

A triple play: a loss, a gain, a change.

Yesterday

Yesterday our friendship died for good
A small death that won’t be noticed
I want to place a small cross on the day
to mark this death and life
life because my small child is gone
she grew up, now part of the quiet woman
who came to me in a dream
when you left
you move on and tell me you won’t change
so you will find another to draw close
and push away, terror
that you will be trapped
you already are, in your own mind
you say you want freedom
in refusing change, that is death
slow and alone, is lonely different from alone?
call it freedom as you wish

I want to grow, I want to learn always
you want your past, your dead
you tell me I am keeping you from your life
you have it back I say as music restarts
I don’t, you say, my brother is dead, my wife
I did not cause those
they happened before we began to walk
and yet you blame me
like an angry child

I am in the gardens wandering
I am in the gardens wondering
the gardens of the world
everything is a garden
though some are planted with skulls
and young people fighting
It is strange to feel whole
I do not know what to do with it yet
but I will

_______________

I have fallen for this band. I am really enjoying them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: triple.

strange

This is part of the decorations in the park by the Kingston, Washington ferry terminal. I think this is a candy cane in the tree. I am afraid that the song that popped into my mind is NOT one of seasonal ones.

And here is another object, this one hanging in the sky.

Live long and prosper.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hang.

excrescence evolution

I’ve shown a photograph of these fungi from my yard a few weeks ago. They are changing. They still look like mushroom flowers but more mature. The fungal network still has not dragged me or the cats underground. Hopefully the network will be patient during winter break.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Yammer

You’ve joined my silent dead: doesn’t matter
whether you speak or not. You’d like this song
and be jealous of the skills. I yammer
to my dead, the number rising strong.
At sixty I declare that I am middle aged
Mom dies at sixty-one which feels unfair.
My sister dies at forty-nine, cancer rage.
I watched them both as chemo takes their hair.
You too are dead no words across the breach.
I yammer to you daily in my head.
Agates gleam, treasure on the beach.
You refuse to look, I mourn that you act dead.
You sit stubborn in a rocking chair alone.
You don’t believe your dead will call you home.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: yammer.

Lit

That moment after the tree is taken down
not from greed but because the trunk has split
dangerous operation; all survive
Even the tree. A split 20 foot trunk may survive.
We won’t know until spring.
You are hunting in the sections that are down.
“Yes!” you say and hold them up.
“Invaders. They’re not native.
I shoot them when they steal the birdseed.
They crawl into the trunk to die.”
You hold a shriveled carcass up with each leather glove.
They too look like leather or shrunken heads.
Your smile lit up
at this evidence of your successful aim:
killing squirrels.

I think this is my first ekphrastic poem. Inspiring photograph, right? So that makes me laugh, it’s so gruesome. I was looking for a photograph for the Flower of the Day and came across this. Taken in January 2022.

sonnet 3

I have neither roots nor wings nor love.
I lie: friends gather round to talk each day.
The early dark slides over from above.
No one to warm my bed, for no one stays.
The dark creeps up a sickening horrid thief.
I have no heart to stay awake at night.
It’s barely five; why this flood of grief?
It’s only in the morning I’m alight
before the morning is even close to dawn.
Wide awake I clamber from my bed.
I stretch, the teapot sings and I just yawn
and wonder why the night brings on such dread.
I tell my friends that now I’ll date a tree.
He never leaves and he will stay with me.

__________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: roots.

Roots

Roots of the earth running through the rock. The more I learn about rocks, the more amazed I am. Rocks are formed by volcanic action, melting and hardening, or by sediment, layers over years, or by pressure on one of the other two.

And there are these roots on the beach as well:

An enormous tree will be there one day and gone the next. Or it will stay in position for years and then disappear.

Here are roots from the sea:

I thought it looks like a mermaid or merman, tossed ashore.

More gifts from the sea.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: roots.