Spirit Blooms » Poetry Sketchbook

Smuggler of Dreams

Barbara — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:00:00 +0000

The New Moon can’t be trusted.
Rather than float her darker
face as a shadow dotting
the brilliance of the sky,
she hides behind a blue mask.

Still the glassy surface of my
inner pool grows agitated,
my vision blotted and obscured,
as if a storm should darken
the horizon, or a great wave
loom and crest above my head.

Night comes. The Moon winks
as she sets, a slit of light that finally
confesses she has spied on us
all day. She pushes the Sun
over the edge of a cliff and
covers the deed in darkness.
As she slips away, she cracks a lock,
opening a door at the back
of my mind, so all the thoughts
I held contained by day
creep out to animate the night.

Dreams bring disordered, broken
shards, loose images, scattered bits,
some light and clear, some dark and
blurred, some missing altogether.
Night’s altered tale is hard to
grasp. It won’t conform to rules of
logic. Still it seduces me. I linger.
At the Sun’s next rise
I smuggle dreams inside my mind,
secret as the Moon’s dark face,
into the world of light.

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Who was the first poet?

Barbara — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:47:21 +0000

I wonder, because reading
so inevitably
pushes me to write.
I wonder, and I even worry.

What if I’d never seen a poem?
Might I burst apart one day
from the pressure of too much
held in too long? Could I have learned,

even as slowly as I do, how to
forge words into a proper
plough to break the heart’s earthy
crust? Could I witness the drop

of soft rain on edgy leaves of thought, see
sun poured on a cloud and stars suspended
in a faint array, high and deep in a black sky?
Would I sense the ruddy pulse of Mars?

What if I’d never known a poem
can sing me to sleep at night,
can single out the imperfections
and perfect whole of a lily pond?

Who would I be, or what?
Where could I go? Who started this?
I want to send the first poet flowers and
lily dreams, across the bridge of time.

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It just got old

Barbara — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:27:17 +0000

old thoughts sometimes
wear grooves so deep
they bury themselves before
new ones can rise
the buried old ones
make good fertilizer

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Focus

Barbara — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:58:58 +0000

Poetry turns
an unshuttered eye
on beauty, on ugliness,
and everything between.

It translates the profound
through focus on
the loved, the reviled,
and everything between.

Not the driest news, nor
the most turgid
melodrama
have anything on this

passion expressed
in objectivity,
objectivity
in passion.

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Early morning in the country

Barbara — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:44:32 +0000

Slick roads. A thousand tires stir the water
in a broken rhythm echoing off concrete.
Brakes squeal, a helicopter passes overhead,
not the first or last today.
All around me people start another work day
that begins, and will end, in traffic.

People say this is the country,
but in the rain I hear city.
So where’s the country?
Is there any left?

Now I hear the gentle tap of rain on roof and leaves.
Cat purrs, washing beside me. Dog snores. Husband stirs
in the other room, at rest in our island of peace.
Birds sing as the sun lightens clouds in the east.
I think about planting seeds and pulling weeds.
Oh — the country is here.

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