Please Go Away

I don’t like you…

stain in the rug

 squeak in the chair

 spider in the cupboard

 lump in the bed

 This isn’t your home…

 ache in my heart

 noise in my song

 anger in my day

 hole in my soul

 I’ll count to ten….

 Then please go away.

    © Bill Vollrath, 2015

Child counting to ten
Drawing from Wikimedia Commons

Chair

You used to believe in me. 

There were moments 

When nothing mattered 

Except for the goodness you saw 

And in my potential 

You thought 

That your vision 

(the good things in me) 

Would hum under the weight 

Of heavy sands 

Of coarse papers 

So 

You stripped away 

Parts of me. 

Cleaned off the broken fragments 

Of leaded, toxic paint 

Old and shredded greens 

Revealing 

An essence I hadn’t been forced to face 

Since I was made by the hand 

Of my creator 

It was too much 

For either of us to see 

So you put me away 

In the dark side of storage 

And forgot about me. 

Here and there 

Glimmers of what might 

Have been 

Would tumble through your waking dreams 

(…solid brass screws over a humming and honed pecan stain) 

But those too 

Were gone. 

And on 

You moved to the next thing. 

Until 

There were no more excuses 

No more places to hide 

Or reasons why 

It couldn’t be 

Dusted me off 

Placed in a sea 

Of light 

And mightily 

Worked again to smooth out the rough lumps 

The inconsistencies 

You once saw as “character” 

You made me hum 

Like the object you had envisioned 

When you first picked me up 

And bought me for less than I was asked for 

But it wasn’t enough 

And your work 

While visible 

Has left me as nothing more 

Than an object 

Sitting beneath the table 

Of imaginary maps 

Waiting to be used 

And to have my value seen 

Like you did before 

© Fergus W. Clare, 2014

    All Rights Reserved

Tutankhamun's Chair, Ancient Egypt, 13th C. BC
Photo by Jon Bodsworth
Wikimedia Commons from the Egypt Archive website
Cairo Museum

Monday Snow

Monday snow drawn from high to low in waves 

Looking to find a place to moor and grow 

In banks and drifts in the early moments of the day.

I see it land now softly with a lightly blown spray

In the crooked of branches of Dogwood elbow

Monday snow drawn from high to low in waves. 

Then cradled as a baby held against all sway

Innocence in a path it does not know

In banks and drifts in the early of the day. 

Like some ancient pilgrim seeking the way

Finding the sky holy holding earth its bones

Monday snow drawn from high to low in waves. 

What was then for what is now know I may 

A snow laced dream resting here alone

In banks and drifts in the early of the day.  

Snow rests in sun and changes by its rays 

As a wayward one who moors then he goes.

Monday snow drawn from high to low in waves

In banks and drifts in the early of the day.  

© Dennis Wright, 2015

Trail at Ivy Creek
Photo by Tony Russell

Naot Farm in Negev Israel

I like to take out that golden March 

morning and hold it warm in both 

hands -- I have my daughters to myself,

they have no father, they have all of me. 

We drive through the desert,

arrive with the stars, find our cabin,

our beds, and drop into deep sleep.

Peace is jangled at daybreak by 

three hundred goats, a chorus of 

baritones warming up with the sun. 

Lines of does cry out to give up their 

milk for thick yoghurt, white butter and 

cheese.  A boy lifts four newborns up from the 

herd; the three who are bleating, kid coats still 

wet, he lowers into a nursery of heat lights. 

The one who is still and stiff with death 

he gently puts into a bag, ties with a string,

and lays high on a rock, safe and silent. 

We roam past pens of goats, their cacophony 

louder than the milk machines’ purr or the 

bark of the dogs or the footsteps of workers who 

tend to the flock. Sun well up, the three of us 

sit together to sip goat milk and coffee, 

feast on chèvre and warm bread.   

© Martha E. Snell, 2014

Three-day-old kid
Photo by 4028mdk09
from Wikimedia Commons