Life With Horace

poetry & essays


1 Comment

Sun 1

What brings you to your knees sun
on mornings when you flee the other world
and mask yourself with cloud
flattening the day’s light into scrim
I feel certain of your grief
and lie resigned to graying tears
running down a window cheek
the house dogs take dimness
as a time to sleep
so there is that


Leave a comment

A way through

Birds perch on the balding arms
and bud knobbed fingers
of the kitchen door apple tree
There is a flashing gleam
from the eye of a jay
the sun finding unlikely passage
My mind blinks in disbelief
that such a thing could be
My heart knows better
and begins to sing


Leave a comment

Thinning time

Seven mornings in a row
the early eastern light
has snatched me away from sleep
filling my eyes with huge slashes
of sunrise, dark angry and pink
The first was on samhain, and
I could see the hand of Rage
reaching slyly toward the thinning 
scrim of time’s divide
its camp follower Fire hoping
to slip through alongside
compressed to nothing
like the soft bones of mice
The whispers of my genes begged
shout No and cry many tears
They will thicken the dawn
refusing entry to this surfeit of evil
All you love depends on them

Audio: Read by the author.



Leave a comment

Everyday pleasures

At the piano I watch small fingers make their music so determined so well done the joy in her eyes is in my heart joking laughter with her brother so much taller than the last time more movies made and volumes read a classroom visit sticky hands and icing gingerbread embellished a dog asleep in sunlight the rhythm of lives cherished and held close in memory to be enriched once more

__________________________________________________
This prose poem was written as I read about the events in the lives of two very dear members of an online creative group I belong to. it is posted in recognition of profound love and loss, and my abiding gratitude for the love of my family, as we gather together this week.