And so she trades her sail for still

her wake for windless waiting.

But at least her harbour’d

solitude brings with it

many stories.

Picture: www.old-picture.com

I don’t see it.

You said I would,

but I can’t.

Am I blind,

or are you a liar?

Or have we both

been misled?

Do I ask

too many questions,

or do the questions

ask too much

of me?

Little girl picture: www.jen-elise.blogspot.com

Old lady picture: www.brokelyn.com

You awake

from your long slumber

not rested, but certain

that you’d never even

been asleep.

And now, an impatient wind

teases the nostrils

of the promiscuous trees.

They huddle together,

sharing secrets.

The heartbeat of Spring,

resuscitated

from your sporadic rest,

jumps again to push

the filaments of breath

back into the sleeping army

of dirty, brown grass,

now blushing green.

Forward then, dear soul,

Wind of wind,

Scent of scent,

Heart of heart,

revive our favored memories

now colored with

the speech of stones,

the sky’s delight,

the lightning’s embrace,

the now and nocturnal –

awaiting to hear

the New of the new.

Picture: www.essenceinphotography.com

I have a number of friends who are writer/poet/musicians like myself. Dan Erickson is one such friend. For my daily offering for National Poetry Month I choose to share the following piece from his personal blog. It was originally posted on April 21st. You can find the poem on his blog here.

in good company

Imagine a world without chicken soup,

where cooking is joyless. Imagine a

world with no rules of order,

no elements of style. Imagine a world

in which Peter Rabbit and Huckleberry

Finn never existed in word or

imagination. Imagine a world

with no “Leaves of Grass.”

The “self-published” have often

been looked upon as less than writers,

sneered at by a snobbish industry.

They’ve been rejected, accused, ignored

and left to rust. They’ve been treated

with disrespect, disdain, and dismissed

as amateurs.

I know.

I was once told,

“Your story is splendid, but we have no

room on our shelves.”

Splendid? Indeed!

It’s a harrowing tale of rape and child abuse.

The critic never read a page.

Stories survive. Survivor’s stories live on.

Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg,

James Joyce, Steven Crane, Edgar Allen Poe,

Walt Whtman, Ezra Pound, Henry David Thoreau,

Thomas Paine, and Virginia Wolff,

just to name

a few.

Roses are read,

where color is words.

Violets are blew,

and sing with the birds.

Her tendrils in time

stretch out to renew,

for Spring isn’t blind,

her labors ensue.

When yellow as time

and auburn as rest,

there comes but a moment

only love knows best.

So turn from the Westland

where winter-deep lives

and point your eyes East

to gifts Summer gives.

Here, in the triage

of heaven’s remains

we see what is needed

to seed late Autumn grain.

Return’d now to Fall,

with not yet wearied skies,

and before sleep succumbs,

she bids all goodbye.

Picture: www.everyseven.com