Options

4/2/2024

I can’t know the way, gentle wind,

If you are even blowing.

There are too many choices,

Filaments of paths are growing;

Past and present lend their voices.

If my feet had taken any other fork,

Could I have saved my chance?

If my heart had beaten harder, done more work,

Could I have kept the dance?

Now all I know is that I cannot mend

Opportunities passed.

Wherever I walk the road there is a bend

Gone dark before the last.

The Storytellers

4/3/2024

I find good company through books and songs

Written by people I may never see.

They share a glimpse of love, wonder at wrongs

This broken world somehow allowed to be.

One speaks of fighting, light against the dark;

Another of hoping for a great escape.

Another of how love may find its mark

Even amidst the dangerous path we shape.

And then there are the folk who, hidden, seem

To share a special fellowship, a muse

That spreads its whispers through a common dream;

A Shallot's mirror they cannot refuse.

I look to distant bards as my heart's kin

Whose stories call for me to let them in.

Personal Demons

4/4/2024

I don’t know how to call you out of hell.

Your inner demons seem to play outside,

Threatening a catastrophe a day.

There is nothing anyone can say

To make them lose their teeth or even hide.

The doctor and the priest can’t make you well.

I have faced some hauntings of my own,

But they loomed and leered in different forms.

I knew, at least, they did not walk the earth.

Only in heart and soul they had their berth,

Even in the worst of raging storms.

But you—you’d face the hateful world alone.

No scales of serpents, daughters of the wind,

Will be enough now to let me relate

To tortured hearing, broken memory.

I’m glad you do not see me enemy,

And dare not try your fears now to berate;

Though I know they are not human-skinned.

You tremble from the ways we try to mend.

Thanks for sharing these, Lily. I've never been good at explaining what I like about a good poem but I'll try give some feedback.

Frustration: I love the metaphor at the end, of the garden exposed to the elements and not keeping to its neat rows. (Grew up in a place with a lot of humidity and rain in season so things get overgrown a lot and it's hard to keep gardens neat without a lot of work and regular care.)

Options: Can definitely relate to this. I think it's a symptom of my anxiety to often worry about "what ifs" and mentally go through all alternatives and outcomes. I cope better when I remember how often I can see God's guiding hand leading me along the right path and sometimes his peace comforts me. But sometimes the anxiety and "if onlies" raise their heads again (especially if the outcomes as we see them did not turn out well).

Storytellers: This one made me feel kinda warm and comforted by the thought that fellow authors or books are a place we can turn to to not feel alone. For some reason it made me think of Inkheart - just in an abstract feeling sense, not content.

Personal Demons: This is a tough one (to read, not to follow or comment on). It expresses something many of us have seen in a friend or loved one and expresses the helplessness we feel to help them. I assume it's specifically personal to tou, but at the same time can be universally applied, which I think is the sign of a good/sucessful poem.

Cheers Lily on!!

Thanks Ajnos. <3 I am glad you find my work relatable. I hope you continue to enjoy the next installments...

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Daybreak

4/6/2024

I only want to know that night watch ends

With something other 

Than a new guard set for morning.

Come, daylight, lend us happier dreams.

Let our fears be smaller than they seem;

The Dark Island's retreat upon the sound of wings,

And stars still shining millions deep

Above the last high tower.

---

Sascha

Inspired by A Stone for Sascha, by Aaron Becker

4/6/2024

Once, you lived.

And once we played in wonder;

Boundless joy bounding on the beach

Like yonder friend with feathered tail.

Once we wandered

The whole world, it seemed.

Now you are nought but bone beneath a stone.

But oh the stone I found you,

Faithful friend.

I wish you could nose out all its adventures,

Across lost empires, simple tribes, and stars,

Before it came out beaten by the sea

Into a simple disc of gold for you and me.

4/7/2024

For a little while, I had a haven,

A hub for free communication;

It’s a story I have lived through many times before.

But thank you to the host for laughter

And for thoughtful times thereafter,

And for offering links to friends

Who made me feel that I could soar.

These Neglected Wonders

4/8/2024

I see a flower, but you call it a weed.

Fierce dandelions, sweet clover, elanor,

Rise from the earth unwanted, spreading seed.

The humble shapes all sing the seasons’ creed,

And though they are mowed down they flourish more.

I see a flower, but you call it a weed.

I am reminded I can let hope lead

When I see the green and gold and more

Rise from the earth unwanted, spreading seed.

Would you find your wonder likewise freed

If you saw God's garden, not invasive spore?

I see a flower, but you call it a weed.

Like your petunias, they all drink storm's mead

Down to their roots, and gladly their leaves soar.

They rise from the earth unwanted, spreading seed. 

They follow only life, not grasping greed

Although removing them's a favored chore.

I see a flower, but you call it a weed,

Rise from the earth unwanted, spreading seed.

A Sisyphus

4/9/2024

It's not enough

That last night's nightmare

Failed to come to pass.

It's not enough

The devils’ fire

Won't catch the rain-soaked grass.

It's not enough

That fear has lied

A hundred times before.

It's not enough

As long as guilt and sorrow

Ask for more.

Rainbow

4/10/2024

Recognition gleams

In the colors of wonder—

Sudden prism joy.

“She dreamed of canaries singing in the dark.”

4/11/2024

And oh, that dark was deep.

Beyond the hope of any spark

The killers’ hands did sleep.

But bright and yellow were their birds,

And singing sweet as pain;

And they brought hope beyond all words,

And refreshing without rain.

Abandoned in the darkened cells

Without a window blue,

They brought out hardened tenderness

Too strange to be true.

Even in a world of blood and nettles,

Eyeless men,

A bird could give the darkest soul

A small light back again.

“Touch-Lamp” (Ode to a Household Object)

4/13/2024

Always attentive,

You wait on the touch of passing fingers

To share your light. 

Decades of brief fingerprints

Burnishing your brassy stem,

Bringing forth a comforting glow

Lasting across many bulbs.

Your curves have been familiar

To my hands since I was small,

Flicking you on and off, 

Off and on, with a child's endless amusement. 

Your dusty shade is shadowed

With memories of chapters gone

And closed, doors looming

Over a former threshold. 

Five Things to Make Me Happy

4/13/2024

What happens in the labradorite–

Dim gray transformed to rainbow-shining heart–

When the crystal's layers hit the light,

And sun or lantern comes to play its part.

The taste of berry sweetness on my tongue

Stirring up my childhood's memories.

Breathing familiar scent into my lung,

Almost feel grandfather's hand in ease.

The richness of a turn of phrase in song,

A rhyme or unexpected metaphor,

Calling my imagination along

A vivid picture just beyond the door.

Downy softness of my good cat's fur

Against my fingers as I stroke a cheek,

Awakening a tiny static purr;

Her simple way to let her pleasure speak.

Excitement as my work is pulled together

In art, in poem, or in recipe.

Finalizing an effect, whenever

The pieces mesh in creativity.

Jumping at Shadows

4/14/2024

There's a lion in the streets,

And a cat outside the mouse hole.

We just have to lurk until it eats.

We wait for the bloody cull.

We don't know how it happened to come

So close to our thin doors,

But we cannot grow numb

To the teeth of preditors.

How long until our safety,

Our escape is assured?

Does it only lurk in fealty

To the fears we've overheard?

Finding a Sister

4/15/2024

I met you by surprise, over a series of questions;

A call sent, half-hoping, into the dark. 

Did anyone know the call of the secret hideaway?

The books that I had loved, within my childhood strictures?

You loved the same pages, imagination's scriptures.

You knew the call of the secret hideaway.

In the dark and lonely you grabbed the hope.

The web sparkled, and brought me my answer.