Thursday, February 28, 2013

Lamb on the Lam

Twenty minutes on the clock
The face of my free spirit
Against the window pain
Of my working soul
Looking out to the forest
Through subjected eyes
Would jump through the pane
And frolic like a spring lamb
But the wolves of hunger
Snarl at dreams on the lam
And keep me punching in
And punching out
Penned inside a body
Enslaved by brick walls.

Monday, February 25, 2013

Stay the Night

56 degrees is a thaw of heart
To tree frogs getting an early start
Sighing over shiny water
Waiting for a moonlit lover.

Fog hovers near the river
Slowly dancing with her giver
Long hair curling with the music
Flowing through the undercurrent.

The sun unwilling to lose this sight
Holds on to both the edges of tonight
Onto the east the moon shines over
Onto the west the pink spreads under.

Into this glory I am cast
Would this mud could hold me fast
But on I trudge about my business
Far removed from the art of living.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Scamps and Jesus



From thoroughbred racehorses to donkeys!
Go figure.
From enhanced excitement and frantic frustration
To funny fiascoes and eclectic emotions.
Is this indicative of a downhill slide on the ladder of life?
I think not.
Here I might find tranquility,
Find joy,
Find Jesus.

By Trudy Jo Watkins
Old Lady of the Woods

Bright and Empty Space

The white page is the light
When I have nothing left to say
The black letters
Little birds that fly away

The two together bound
Of gentler thoughts made
A cage of unruliness
Where fears are played

Until submitted to paper
Perched in sleep
Silenced prayers
My soul to keep

My fingers turn another page
The light is bright
And empty space

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Sunflower


one

sun

a world

united

living cohesion

an expansion of creation

wave of wonder to concretion from a word spoken

patterned paternity in maternal matrix of hanging gardens hinged by spacetime

seen in single spiraling galaxy of sunflower seeded Fibonacci sequence pollinating one honey drone's ancestral tree


Prompted by Verse First ~ Fibonacci Poems at Poets United and for love of numbers.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Inside the Hourglass

Time heals all wounds
But mortal ones.

Immortal ones
transcend time

Repeating the beating
Until karmic pawn released.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

For Love of Place

For love of place
Where a baby garter snake consumes an earthworm
Where the newt and desert toad wrestle and roll
Where the Triops is awakened by rain
Where the sunflower and globemallow grow
Where the maligned thistle hosts hummingbirds
And ladybugs and twenty other species
Where mated ravens swoon from the sky
Where the coyotes raise pups in the gulch
Where packrats construct prickly pear barricades
Where the chickens held their own free range
Where the bobcat pads
Where potatoes and carrots grew sweet in mountain dirt
Where a house of freedom was built
Where thunder rocked the roof
Where the stars tell stories
Where silence speaks
Where memories sleep and time forgets us
Where was our home
For love of place.

Anaphora

The American Nightmare

The American nightmare
Begins with a dream
And ends with foreclosure

Is a beautiful mind
Sent to school
For a dumbing down

Is a horn of plenty
Made of nothing
But corn

Is purchased
With the wages
Of two or three jobs

But that is okay
We have always been
Hard workers

From the time
We were captured
Or indentured

And not much has changed
We still have it made
In our first world

Though most everything
Is now made
In China

Where I would venture
To compare blades they use
With the ones they sold me

In American markets
Of mediocrity
And planned obsolescence

Where the trash piles up
And overflows landfills
Where nothing can grow

Polluted plots
Not fit to build
A home on.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Contents Under Pressure

They are but balloons
Inflated with anger
Afloat with bloated indignation.
Would they could pop and spew
Foul contents on he who holds their strings,
Except that I am caught in the middle
Juggling the bedpans and emesis basins.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Black Wing Conspiracy

Why ravens are not here I do not know.
The crows reside in Oklahoma
Aloof avian shadows
Curious but pretending not to notice,
Not like the bumptious ravens
Who introduce themselves
Dropping snowballs on your head.

Reserved and studiously shy
Crows are harder to get to know
But I will try like a raven.
For it is my code to crack
This interspecies lack
Of communication.

My Rosetta Stone
A shiny polished rock
Thus far deciphered
Reveals, I am certain,
That a family of ravens
Is not an unkindness;
A clan of crows
Is not a murder.

At least not of me,
For a raven saved my life one day
Or marked me for another world.
What a crow one day
Will say or do . . .
My soul awaits.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

A Racehorse, A Barn Owl, and I

Fog descended on the track
In early morning deviation from the delta
Sudden coming with galloping hooves
Enveloping eardrums with equine pounding 
As all other sounds were muffled by gray mist
And my own quickened heart beat
As vision obscured without warning
And ground underneath disappeared in cloud
And a racehorse and rider took flight
At the exact moment a barn owl did alight
On the rail
Our only tie to earth that for a moment
A racehorse, a barn owl, and I left behind.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Bruneulogy


My dog is dead
By senility led
To wait for me in the road.
My lightened load
Not having to put him down
Does not relieve soul's frown 
Or cause hope to bloom
In this morning gloom
That in deafness he didn't see
That he soon would not be
Waiting longer for me there,
But in another place somewhere.
And if my best friend ain't there,
I don't need to go.
           


Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Crone Knows

The maiden does not know
What she does not remember,
But when she recognizes in a man
His power to move the earth
Out from under her feet
It begins to come back to her.
Maiden, mother, crone.

The mother known
Does not have time to remember
For she is consumed with
The procreation of children,
An artistic madness to produce
Works of art in her own image.
Maiden, mother, crone.

Children grown with children of their own
With children of their own
The crone knows
And babbles incomprehensible mysteries
Into the void of understanding
Between her and her caretakers
Who mistake her malady
For the dementia of old age.
Maiden, mother, crone.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Now

It comes
One last breath
And does not remember
Birth, the first breath taken,
Or all the breaths in between.
It takes us from breath to breath
Whether we notice or not and teaches us
From cradle to grave there is nothing to learn,
For knowing is neither created nor made it just is
The weft and warp of worlds woven or unwound around bodies.


Prompted by Verse First ~ One Word At A Time at Poets United.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Submission

Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice,
A booming dirge of angelic warning!
To a soul of indecision left to choice,
Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice,
Any direction given is a cause to rejoice.
Freedom of will begins with mourning
Waiting for a god to speak in still small voice
A booming dirge of angelic warning.


Submission, a triolet.
Shared in the Poetry Pantry.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Duir Way


This door to the west
Might leave me refreshed
Or dead in my tracks
If wisdom attacks
In form of the serpent
Before I repent
But to just walk this ley line
I would lay my all on the line
And believe it all for the best
To seek this sweet rest
And be reborn not in the future
But in the past
Having come the full circle
At last.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Rumex acetosella, Where the People Are

I searched for you
Half the morning
And in frustration asked
The question in my mind
"Where are you?"
And you replied
"Where the people are"
And sure enough
Sheep sorrel
Your tendency to domestication
Like your namesake
Shined through this wilderness
And by a campfire ring of rocks
I found you
Clinging to disturbed soil
Of where your people trod.

Oxalis stricta and I

Potted with peace lily
You
Yellow wood sorrel
Wild weed sowed
Sunny in windowsill
Reaching skyward 
Erect with pickle pods
I
From chaos
Escaped to cafeteria
And iceberg lettuce
Flavorless 
Imagining how 
We two souls
Without the confines
Of your pot
And my sterilized halls
Would have room to grow
You
Enough to share your flavor
With my salad and
I
To resonate your gift
Of freedom to the sky
But like a good little shamrock
You will stay on your sill
And when the sun sets
Fold your heart felt leaves in sleep
And I will clock out
And go home without you.

Reflecting on a Moment

Riding shotgun again with my brother,
Wind blows hair on my face to smother.

The hot rod's candy-apple-red paint
Makes me shiver and feel faint.

The rumble of the powerful motor
Makes me thankful it's not yet over.

But he's 66 and I'm 69 years
The nostalgic beauty is all in the tears.


By Old Lady of the Woods
Trudy Jo Watkins

Friday, February 1, 2013

Merry Mint and Savory

Between January gloom
And March bloom
Is February
A time to jump the gun
Get a head start on spring
And outrun all that is sedentary
For no false start here
In any freezing year
Can diminish my merry
Mint and savory
Ice palace of thawing hope.