The dishwasher hums with cyclical rhythm
and somewhere your feet are pumping at the same cadence
returning to me.
Water sloshes around the sealed box, cleaning,
and somewhere you are salty with wet, sipping Gater-aid
to get through kilometer eighty.
The kitchen dishes are washing
your pedals are turning
and I am waiting for your salty kisses.
Happy birthday, you said
bending over to kiss my cheek.
And with my fluttering heart and flaming blush
I decided that was my first kiss,
that all the others did not count.
Because I wanted my first kiss to come from you,
my heart believed it had.
You’re inside a box,
safe within your preconceptions,
covered with the dirt of mediocrity,
buried alive.
If elephants dream
is it of grey nasal caresses,
flapping tails and
family strolls in the savannah?
Are elephants dreams
larger than life,
a two year gestation
of what might be?
In the classroom,
words fill the air,
hovering above student heads.
I blow gently and
floating words drift,
falling into outstretched hands
dropping into open mouths
forming ideas,
transforming notions,
dribbling out their pens.
I see through poet’s eyes
life recorded in metaphor
ideas dancing with possibilities.
I hear through poet’s ears
the humming of memory
the clatter of change
the sibilance of serenity
I touch through poet’s hands
hard thoughts,
rough realities,
soft dreams.
I smell through a poet’s nose
freshly mown hay of a summer day
leaves burning in an autumn evening
I taste through a poet’s tongue
the sourness of betrayals
the sweetness of hope
The poet has an infinity of senses
that reach into history
and unravel mysteries.
Today is my mom’s 86th birthday, so I wrote her a poem:
.
My mother is a sewing machine
Stitching life together like a quilt.
She can make anything grow
as the needle whirs and punctures
Creating history.
When you wrapped me in that warm embrace
fireworks exploded in my brain
red and purple stars shot from my head and lit the room.
Incandescent memories are the after image
of our fragmentary connection.
.
.
.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about another lost poem. I’m happy to say that poem was found! This is it! A glance at a picture sparked the memory, and it came back! It’s not quite as it was, since the 3rd/final line of the original didn’t return, but I am satisfied with the cinquain it became. 🙂
Over there are rides and such,
but here are the barns and displays.
4-H sheep, goats, rabbits, and cows
The spinners and weavers.
Photographers.
Prizes for craftwork.
Mini-doughnuts and fresh squeezed lemonade.
Local talent on stage: kids dancing,
dreamers singing.
We stand at our assigned gate, and stamp arms
so folks can get back in later.
You don’t talk to me
I don’t talk to you.
That’s fair.
Shawn L. Bird 