poem

I will miss
Cricket symphony
Taccata and Fugue
Evening murmuring
Howls of hounds
startle geese calling out,
ensuring mate is safe

Winds sings through pine
Trees tell delicate stories
Of bird families held,
nurtured, let go to
Autumn's call

Slight breezes sip upon my
Skin, like puppies blindly
nuzzling for mothers' milk
Calls of silent aching

Last embers of fire smolder
to remind that danger
passed so closely Yet
Spared the predator
No fire too close
No smoke too far

Sleeping ducks alert
The ponds chill and wings
slip to their sides as
Graceful ancient water ballet
Keep safe the delicate dreams

No fear. No drowning
All buoyant and sacred
The moon casts strong
shadows now high
In the heavens

Chickens roost near our
doorways. Heads tucked
into feathered warmth
Familiar as mother hen body
kept chicks warm in safe
sanctions. Only rooster
Awakens to check on mates
Sleep and once again

Crickets lull the illusion
Of summer safety and danger
I will miss warm reminders
I gather the fleece close to
my naked skin.

Dog approaches
To tell me. The season for
Sitting in warmth and
Summer comfort draws
near as the last moth
Circles evening spotlight

I glow with the gifts
Change but elusive. I am
Certain to feel this
Again in the evening

I will miss nothing but
Cricket serenade in
Sonatas
The chorus heard
In another time. Another
World. Another summer night
Ahead of my motion

Enjoy. Change so dear
That the world holds it
Constant. No chaos tonight

Ducks murmur
Geese call
Chickens roost
Breeze touches
Skin cells continue this
Glory
Change

September 25, 2010
12:31am

Needles in the Black Hills

Ah, but I digress ...

mother's garden

That Snowy Day

home movies
showed me following dad
out of a pine forest
hopping in the snow
behind the tree he
cut for Christmas… I was
three. The movies play
in my memory over and over

I looked out of the oxygen tent
distorted plastic images
dad and Uncle Jimmy, hat
in hand, looking resigned
I knew I had died once then
I was four.

Summer of the Beatles
Red Rocks ’64 how I wanted
to see them, so I stayed with
daddy that summer in Denver
fresh paint on the wall of my
very own room, we spent the days
together and we giggled and read
books and talked about not seeing
things one way,

more became my
horizon and I grew strong

A few visits since that time
at the cabin in Coal Creek, he would
drink and I would go outside
smoke reefer, come back to giggle
with Wanda and dad

by that time the stories were dearer

Wanda called one night ’79
dad was in the VA hospital dying
cancer of lung then liver
I gathered tapes of swing music
photos that my sisters ordered me
not to show him,

his grandsons
in 16 x 20 sat next to his bed
a ward filled with dying veterans
he had life to show off

and we listened and laughed
and I heard questions I could not
answer and four months, every night
I sat by that bed, learning why
mother had loved him

The last day at the hospital
nurses pointed to a single room
last hour on earth and we held
hands and we cried and we giggled

and he died and I will never forget
that snowy day, bobbing behind that
fallen tree and catching up to
my daddy to grab his gloved hand
and follow


20.6.2010
lmullinw