To Waiting

To Waiting

All morning by the highway

I waited.

The day was a string with

the bead of you swinging

amber and whole at its end.

Dust lifted my hair;

dust was the way the wind

found its fingers

there where I dreamed the fall

of your hair over me--

a wave, a sigh, a landslide, 

the soft brown roots 

of not one tree

but a fern-tangled forest;

 I waited for this 

without caring how long,

alive as a vine that covers

a dying barn, as an apple tree

whose apples are flowers,

rose-white in clouds;

as the bud on the cane

hides the thorn in the rose

as the rose abides  

in the round hip I gave

to soften the ground

each time we'd wait

for breath to come back

from that place

in the dark where

the storm rides.

~June 2015

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Sunday Mini-Challenge: Ode to the Quotidian

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily) offers us the example of the sublime Neruda and his odes to everyday things as a springboard, but as always leaves us some breathing room to slip in something else. This is something else, as I usually think of an ode as something a bit more full of  the blood sweat and tears of form than this--still, what could be more quotidian than waiting?

Image: Apple Tree, I , 1912,  by Gustav Klimt
Public domain via wikiart.org

Five Charms

by  lolamouse or babymouse 2014

Five Charms

Five charms I picked up

from the dimestore dust,

all silver and blue and black in my hand:

A vase, an acorn, a button of fire,

two eyeballs with a look of command.

I strung them up quick

on a spaghetti string, tied as

tight as a tattoo on my wrist

but the vase tipped over and spilled its blood,

the acorn poked, the button burned

and the eyeballs saw more than they should.

So beware of the luck

that you find in the dirt.

Some things should be left,

some things charm up hurt.

~April 2014

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 Challenge: Whozits and Whatzits

Lolamouse (Mouse Droppings)  has given us some truly unique photos of various arcane and odd ..stuff..taken at a shop she visited  on a trip to Portland, Oregon with her daughter. Bizarre as it may sound, I had already had the dream (including the eyeballs) that sparked this poem and written  a few lines of it down--I couldn't ask for a better pic to have enabled its completion. Thanks, LM!

Image by lolamouse or babymouse.

Used with permission.

Blue Beads

Blue Beads

On the nightstand

a string of blue beads--

my spectacle leash, lazy

lanyard of the lenses now

an arabesque abstraction arcing

in its fall, Picasso-blue shadowed sinew

curled like a snake of glass, its antic form

elastic, never quick but still skin-warm.

I wore blue beads once,

blue beads I strung myself,

cobalt, cornflower, azure as a fjord,
seed beads from machines, trade beads,
flamework beads all berried on a cord.

Each globe or tube felt like a cerule bit

of some far kindred lake-blue kelpie's spit.

I wore blue beads once

I strung myself, around my throat;

I took a needle up and ran it through

each heart-tunnel. Each centered hollowness

opened to the string to kill its separateness.

I joined them piece by piece to make one thing,

one winding measured entity of blue.

I wore blue beads once

across my cooling breast, shortly after

the work of forming the heart was done.

Their order mocked its pinkly freckled white

and mimicked its blue veins, its baby sun

all lampwork  and capillaried lace,

each rivulet seeking, hot and uncongealed,

a cracked vessel that had never been annealed.

~March 2014

posted for     real toads

Open link Monday

Process notes: Flamework is another name for lampwork, a technique by which the designs on some glass beads are produced. Annealing is the process of cooling down formed glass gradually to resolve internal stresses so the piece will have structural integrity and endure.

Photo: Blue Beads, copyright joyannjones 2014
All Rights Reserved.

Friday Flash 55 ~ Bead Work

Bead Work

Love isn’t measured in

sneezes from ragweed kisses

in  moments or hours

all black or white.

It’s a  handworked hide,

spirit canvas

stitched in sinew

dyed in heartblood

shrunk with spleen

chewed by dulled teeth

beaded complete

with patience and art,

sewn for robes

soft and warming

that may or

may not 

fit.

October 2011

Posted for   Friday Flash 55   at the G-Man's

After much searching through the dusty archives of the hedgewitchian vault deep below the castle, fighting zombie spiders and stuff, I  finally unearthed this artifact. Only for you, Galen.

Image: Cheyenne Shirt at Woolaroc[museum], Oklahoma By Wolfgang Sauber

(Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 

(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)],

via Wikimedia Commons

Find out more about Woolaroc, near Bartlesville OK,"...established in 1925 as the ranch retreat of oilman Frank Phillips. The ranch is a ...3700 acre wildlife preserve, home to many species of native and exotic wildlife,....[and] also a museum with a collection of western art and artifacts, American Indian material, and one of the largest collections of Colt firearms in the world." here at ~wikipedia

String of Beads; repost for Meeting the Bar: Crit Friday at dVerse

This is a repost of  an older poem that was originally written for the January Challenge at Facial Expressions Poetry Circle on Facebook. It also was a OneShotWednesday selection at OneStopPoetry. I think I am far enough in time from it to benefit from a good critique, as I had numerous problems writing it, as I always do with sonnets. Looking forward to some honest appraisal of what works here and what doesn't. And welcome to everyone from  dVerse Poet's Pub Crit Friday hosted by Luke Prater.

String of Beads

A circle’s string of beads decks out a hook

beside a broken wishbone on a nail,

a mouse’s skull within a warded nook,

all relics hidden from the cyclone’s tail

and given me to make a summer song.

Sharp shadows thrown by arbitrary light

convinced my heart that time had right or wrong,

unlike the void that opened with the night;

that will could make things speak that had no tongue

and days be numbered in a wheel of sense

with grace, like beads so innocently strung

beside the broken bones for recompense—

     but now I draw a breath in quick dismay

     to find the sickly smell of sweet decay.

January, 2011

Meeting the Bar:Crit Friday is an open platform for honing the tools of the writer's craft through constructive criticism in a protected community environment. Be sure to stop by and read Luke's ground rules before linking up, here at dVerse

String of Beads

String of Beads

A circle’s string of beads decks out a hook

beside a broken wishbone on a nail,

a mouse’s skull within a warded nook,

all relics hidden from the cyclone’s tail

and given me to make a summer song.

Sharp shadows thrown by arbitrary light

convinced my heart that time had right or wrong,

unlike the void that opened with the night;

that will could make things speak that had no tongue

and days be numbered in a wheel of sense

with grace, like beads so innocently strung

beside the broken bones for recompense—

but now I draw a breath in quick dismay

to find the sickly smell of sweet decay.

January, 2011

Posted for OneShotWednesday at the inimitable OneStopPoetry

This sonnet previously appeared for the January Creative Challenge at Facial Expressions Poetry Circle, on Facebook