A moment of celebration
raise your hands, wave the palms
Palms together, clap your hands,
No palmistry to understand
when they raise you up
they’ll drop you down.
Get ready to sup and pray some.
Silver’s exchanged for a soul
just thirty little pieces.
The whole world pivots around
this moment of celebration,
before the coming devastation.
But after grief,
Relief. and
Peace.
.
.
A little Palm Sunday poem for you.
The music echoes through her bones
throbbing heart beat,
quivering quavers,
filling feet with rhythm.
Eyes scanning for possibilities,
Whose arms will encircle her?
Will he be the one to enfold her,
entwine their bodies,
make her sway
under his percussion?
She watches and wonders,
Shall she dance?
.
.
.
(Inspired by Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez tonight)
There was no way to stay.
Whatever choice was made
was bound to be wrong,
because this song we create
requires we pay again and again
for our harmonic
dissonance.
.
.
Still reading Jodi Picoult’s Mercy. Do you write poems for the characters you read about?
The label on the bra
reads “Keep away from fire.”
Is this a warning against
flames of excessive passion,
self-immolation, or
metaphorical representations
of feminist independence?
.
We’re home, and it’s raining.
Vacation sun hidden
Blue skies masked by grey
I didn’t ask you to say
anything. I waited.
Too late.
We’re home, and it’s raining.
I didn’t mean to do it.
The clerk was trying to teach me to do something for myself
but I had neither time nor inclination.
I just wanted a book, and if the one I had requested from the other campus wasn’t there,
it didn’t matter where it was in the system
or whether it was coming.
Today I could pick it up, not tomorrow or later.
It wasn’t here, so I just wanted to sign out the book in my hand.
When she tried to explain what I should do to trace the path of the missing book
explain the complex library system, invite me to log into a computer off to the side,
I gave her the look.
I didn’t mean to, but I did.
She froze and her sentence stuttered to a halt,
eyes gaping at me.
She passed my book over the scanner, gulping.
I apologized for not being teachable.
I don’t know where I developed the look,
I don’t realize I’m doing it until I see the reaction.
I don’t know what I’m doing precisely
that conveys such intense disinterest and disapproval
but it does.
At least I didn’t have to sit for ten minutes
for a lecture and computer consultation, like she wanted.
Three minutes in the university library was long enough
when I am hobbling with a cane
and irritated with accessibility.
I am cracked earth,
parched red clay
shrinking in the sun.
You are water,
not a flood
pouring over, but
a gentle, constant rain,
infiltrating slowly,
waking dormant seeds,
bringing blossoms,
to barren hopes,
remaking me.
Release your words
Let them go
Have faith that they will flutter like leaves
around
above
upon.
Some will watch and smile as the leaf words go by.
Some will study, approve, disprove, analyze, consider.
Some will see the words upon their landscape, sweep them up
send them away.
One might press your words to savour for another day.
Leaves offer scent, food, shade, beauty, and garden humous.
Every purpose is good.
Release your word leaves
to the purposes they find,
whether they’re what you intended,
or not.
Let them go.
Have faith.
In the bedroom mirror
curves swerve
from shoulder to ankle
arcing circle
fertility curling her.
In the rearview mirror
an undulating landscape
curves swerve
from hills to plain,
clouds bubbling
with the fertile promise of rain.
Clean fill wanted.
Fill ‘er up.
Free fill.
Post buffet belly full.
Fill the empty space, erase the years.
Botox?
Not free.
But fills
Shawn L. Bird 