I count three shooting stars
as the porch swing rocks to the rhythm
of one desperately lovesick frog.
poem-missing August 7, 2014
Three thirty-three in the morning
I awaken, drenched in sweat.
I turn on the fan,
waiting for sleep to return
wishing that you were beside me.
poem-the switch August 6, 2014
Trying to type
Fingers feel
unattached to hand.
Eyes blur.
Stomach rocks
Head dull.
It’s so hard
to rejoin
the diurnal world
.
.
Thursday I have to be in a workshop at 8 a.m. my time. I need to be alert and absorbing information. I’ve been going to bed between 4 and 7 a.m. the last few nights, working through the greatest heat. My plan was to start last Friday, moving back an hour each night, but it didn’t work. It was 4:30 on Sunday and 3:30 on Mon, despite pharmaceutical aid. (I can stay up for hours after sleeping pill. My body relaxes, but my brain just keeps plugging along…) Wish me luck getting to bed at midnight tonight, with all my packing and preparations in order!
Yawn
poem-darkness June 23, 2014
The porch swing rocks
beneath a speckled sky.
Mosquito hums fill the air;
black wings swoop overhead
in invisible rustlings,
swallowing music.
poem- quiet June 8, 2014
The house rests.
Five bodies drift on dreams.
One sits, enshrined in song,
strums softly
on strings:
a living lullaby.
poem- yet May 20, 2014
You gather me into you
Entangling limbs and
Tickling kisses on the neck.
.
Your breath tangles in my hair
Escaping through quivering tendrils
Trembling into the night.
.
Your heartbeats drum against my back
Exquisite timpani.
Time stops.
poem- night breath January 14, 2014
Night breathes
its peace in
shimmering air
dusted with winter.
.
Night breathes
its silence in
rustling wishes
between sheets.
.
Night breathes
an invitation in
a lingering look
over the shoulder.
.
Night breathes
a promise in
peace,
silence,
invitation.
Night quote December 15, 2012
There is so much to be done, there is so much that can be done. One person — a Raoul Wallenberg, an Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr. — one person of integrity, can make a difference, a difference of life and death. As long as one dissident is in prison, our freedom will not be true. As long as one child is hungry, our life will be filled with anguish and shame. What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.
(Elie Wiesel in Night p. 120)
July 18, 2012
“Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain” – Elie Wiesel
I have have read Wiesel’s book Night, which is thin, and yet packs a far more powerful punch than many fat works. For non-fiction, his quote is clearly true: what you leave out is as significant as what’s left in. For fiction, however, when everything has to be put in from the author’s imagination, a whole world must be created. There is no rock to take away from. There is only dirt, which must be formed into being, like men formed from clay.
Shawn L. Bird 