The fiery flame of your hair
declares you.
You flash with fury and
unleash lashes of your tongue.
Light catches
in the disapproving flips
of your flickering locks,
We witness your scorching glare.
Viewed from a distance,
a bonfire is a beautiful thing
and I occasionally enjoy ginger snaps
while watching the fire.
.
.
Ah, it’s a stereotype, I know, but sometimes folks walk right into their cliché and live there.
I was broken.
You sliced me,
knife blade deep,
peeling back skin,
excavating muscle,
exposing bone.
Then you
wound in screws,
stitched me together,
wrapped me in glass
and left a slash of
pulsing agony
to remember you by.
.
.
(Dedicated to Dr. Parfitt my orthopædic surgeon. 🙂 Sounds so much better as a metaphor; unfortunately he did all this literally!) 😉
Our lives are Jenga towers:
intricate stacks of circumstance
that in a moment can
collapse around us.
.
Today’s sight
is a palette of black and white.
Today’s dichotomy
will be tomorrow’s
possibility
Whatever is tied up in this gift
unwrap it joyfully.
Pull out difficulty, challenge, and struggle;
laugh at the lessons you’re learning.
Celebrate what has been and what will be
Celebrate what is now and what will be
Celebrate you.
Celebrate me.
Celebrate
what
will
be.
Each day is a gift
New for you to
Celebrate.
She’s reached the end of her rope
and she’s swinging hard,
pumping her legs for maximum height,
fury fueling her flight.
She’s aiming for the edge
she’s leaping into space
and she’s grabbing on the way down.
When she lands,
she’s crushing injustice beneath her feet.
and throwing up her hands,
in victory.
.
.
Been editing tonight. Just getting to the end of the story, when the downtrodden heroine seizes power… 😉
Anew
you are printed,
packaged
addressed,
journeying to a distant place
unfolding before distant eyes
to be judged
and found worthy
or not.
In time,
you may find
a measure of fame
or fortune between
the pages of some book
but for now
you are just
another manuscript
off in the mail.
.
.
(Sending off a short story to a local ‘prestigious’ writing contest. The story was short listed a couple of months ago in a contest worth twice the prize money, so who knows? These things are so subjective.)
Between then and now
Between here and there
Between faith and doubt
Between love and hate
Between us and them
Between you and me
Between life and death
We hover
Teen-agers are
loudly gregarious.
Their laughter magnified by tousles.
People who are afraid of them,
would not be, if they saw them
collapsed upon my drama room floor
giggling like so many puppies,
or arguing about their favourite authors
around the tables in the library.
Though even wolves
are adorable
when they’re little.
I am sure
I told them
We are sure
Yes, we are young
We told them.
Yes, it’s been fast,
But the college is small
and we get to know people
quickly. We’ve seen each other
ten hours a day for months.
We didn’t tell them
about the ice cold walks,
holding mittened hands,
the tears,
the dreams.
We held those to ourselves.
Well, they said,
If you’re sure.
So we said I do
and I do, too
And we leapt off
a precipice
together.
.
.
.
This is the 30th anniversary of the day I met my dear man. By the summer we were married, and still are
falling.
Shawn L. Bird 