A poem is violin song. It asks only that you let it play, even as it sings your life back to you, and rends your heart to hear it and do nothing but listen. Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser
Metamorphosis
There’s a quality of light just after a rain, when the sun first shines through gray and turns every green thing several shades brighter. The birds are subdued, but sound hopeful. The light sparkles in drops of water suspended on pine needles. It dims, then grows, in a pulsing kind of dance, from gray to…
Unspoken
A crow wakens me from a dream that you found words I wrote in private. Some groundhog far away didn’t see his shadow, so now crows pair off, dancing, cawing, impressing mates for spring. I sleep and dream you found my journals. I wonder if you read my stream of consciousness, saw the flying buttresses…
Life’s palette
Souls come in splashes of color, intermingling, from pale spring pastel to chartreuse, opening a gaudy bloom in a hot summer garden, or tossing a pigment-saturated leaf in autumn. One fades, a soft breeze that waved flower tops departs in murmurs of leaves, a whisper lost. Another dies. All the flowers droop, leaves fall as…
Sometimes a flood
Grief lays stones in my heart, one for each loss, gemstones all, but it’s harder to pump blood around stones. Sometimes a family of beavers moves in, fells trees, sets up house. Minding their business, they don’t know they stop the flow. The pressure builds, wet, heavy, nudging rocks, until the dam bursts, catching me…
Past perfect, present imperfect
On the perfect yellow rose rested a dewdrop as perfect as the rose in every way.It slid down the petal with a most perfect grace, then fell to the rich soil below, content to find its place.I will never be as perfect as the dewdrop, yet in my awkward way, I have my grace, and…
In the attic
We pack things into this keeper of castoffs, treasures fallen from favor, things no one wants to remember or forget. Letters and cards, photos of the loved, departed, clothes that no longer fit, traces of money earned, then lost or spent, yellowed magazines, books we’ll surely read again, and those no one will— manuscripts that…
Edgar Allan Poe
Dear Mr. Poe, Thank you for the poetry, the stories, the mystery. Happy Birthday. Respectfully, a fan * * * The Raven (excerpt) And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s…
The naked truth
Truth doesn’t come in a pretty package tied up in wrapper and ribbon. Truth comes in a flash of insight, in words left unspoken. One might pray for truth yet never find it until ready, stretching, in a desperate, humble moment of surrender. Truth doesn’t enter the writer’s mind while she waits, pen poised to…
The unseen
When I’m invisible, I watch people go on living all around, unaware that I watch. Dropping their guard, they dance and flow and sing, full streams of clear water, bubbling. Only as long as I’m silent, apart, not a part of their lives, never entering their hearts. For when I begin to interact with people,…