Creeping along, devouring everything in sight,
unsatisfied,
wrapped up in strings of your own making
wound up in yourself
chrysalis
waiting for wings.
Patience is a virtue.
You break free, stretch,
the new you quivers with discovery.
You fly, fill life with sweetness,
bring joy to those who watch you
waltz with the wind
until
you fall life-less.
The core of you crumbles,
but the breeze captures the wings left behind
and carries them,
curling and flipping
to the sky.
The clouds drift beneath the stars in diaphanous gowns
Frogs call to distant lovers
Chill walks through the garden
Summer’s grasp on our evenings is slipping.
Hot day.
The mall is packed.
Swimming lessons need a driver
(kids can’t get anywhere by themselves, after all).
Joggers sweating past.
Gas mower chugs obnoxiously around the yard.
I miss the soft swisha-swisha of dad’s old Rotary mower
when summer was gentler
and filled with children’s laughter.
A hundred years ago these fields yielded
grief, fear, bodies, blood, and mud.
Now, wheat dries golden in the sun,
leaves wave in the breeze over crater scars,
While the earth returns bones and bombshells
to the surface: a century of slowly expulsing the detritus of war
extruding shrapnel from its pockmarked body with the new grass.
.
.
Watching the history channel, and amazed to learn that even today, Belgian farmers keep bins in their yards for unexploded shells they find, and the army comes by regularly to collect and destroy them. What a legacy a hundred years later! I’m just finishing Anne Perry’s World War One series which has made trench warfare very vivid.
Lightning has sliced the sky
forced apart air until the earth
is shaking with fear of it.
A jaunty hat catches eyes
inspires a smile.
A jaunty hat always tries
to beguile
but it’s too happy to seduce
its morals are not loose
That hat’s a joyful
welcome mat to fun.
In a moment
everything she thought she’d be
was sliced away.
In a moment
simple expectations yielded
to new arrays.
In a moment
opportunity seized her hand
to her dismay.
In a moment
foolish disappointments
were child’s play.
In a moment
her entire future was pulled
onto a new pathway.
See the twisting silence
weaving between them;
pursed lips, downcast eyes,
See their knot tighten
further together, closer apart.
We’re raining
damp permeates bones
sky slides claustrophobically close
Grey day
Shawn L. Bird 