Two Ways of Looking at Bone

1

Bone is a most interesting thing.

It encrypts brick and feather

it's shaped 

with shades of blue

like ice midwinter

that Maine winter of cerulean snows

when a small boy's 

sledding yells rappelled 

down the hill.

2

But now 

spring is a carousel

that spins a kindred melody

(Are daffodils ciphers 

bloomed to mock death?)

brings a bone wish 

to walk again 

the garden 

to feel earth's curve 

under spine.

Inspired by Hannah Gosselin's blog, Metaphors and Smiles, back in March where she gave intriguing instructions for a Guided Poem. I liked it and have been playing with it since. Today's post by Grace over at Real Toads about Wallace Stevens pulled it together though. It's another in my Bone Poem series.

This Search for Tribe

This search for tribe

along world's riverbanks

with names of past ghosts

exhausts me. At some point

I sigh surrender, go home

among the ghosts of ancestors

long past whose names I do not know

but whose genes form my riverbanks,

folded and tucked, course bent, 

hands structured, twilight eyes, 

this mother tongue spoken,

my tribe.

Posted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets and inspired by Margaret's archived challenge, Play it Again # 15, back on Saturday over at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads. I chose the one imagined by Ella in 2012 about Poem Sketching- using a word group and developing it into a poem. I'm a little late but the words I used are: tribe, riverbank, ghosts, names. I took the photo in Prince Edward Island where my maternal grandmother is from.

Strange Dirge

"You pluck strange dirges from the storm

sift rare stones from the ashes of the moon"

You've always been this way.

It's what drew me to you in May

of '71. Me with storms in my life

that needed music and moon-struck strife

that begged a mining of sorts, a sifting through

remains searching for stones you blew

to life like a shaman, prelude to all that came after.

We mined together then and sang out loud until we crafted

our sweet song. That time the strange dirge was sung
over our first daughter you stayed in such a way that along

with storm's barrage and from the ashes, we rose, not triumphant,
but still standing, longing that phoenix might bring bereft

to some other incarnation, any other incarnation than only gone,
us left alone, two not three, with nothing more to be done.



Posted for Grace at Real Toads who introduced us to the poetry of Wole Soyinka, the first Nobel Laureate in Literature from Africa and asked us to use his work as inspiration. The first two lines of this poem are his from the poem: Fado Singer for Amelia Roderinguez. The photo was taken by my Honey at the National Orchid Garden in Singapore.

The Weight of Blue

Back when I didn't yet know that goodbyes 

might be final, when time stretched generously to places

untraveled, back when you and I lived

in the pink bloom bubble of always, 

blue came, wrapped us in crenalated

folds dampening other colors, tamping down  

heartfire as it introduced finality. We 

bowed under the weight of blue.

Posted for Flash 55 Plus for Kerry O'Connor at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads who asked us to add the element of color to our 55 words. I took the photo in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

Bone's Memory

When I picture myself alive I'm in lavender 

fields near home back when muscles

powered me anywhere I pleased. They brought me

one morning to purple flower bustles

stretched out

far as eyes see, lavender cowls

gathered free,

held close against my decline,
becoming only bone, having to surrender

home's fields and time's spine.

Posted for Kerry's Flash 55 at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads with an additional feature of a form she devised with a word count each line and a rhyme scheme. The original inspiration was from Hannah's prompt, also from Real Toads, of Lavender Fields under Transforming Thursday/ Friday Nature's Wonders. Also posted for Open Link Night, hosted by Claudia, over at dVerse Poets Pub. Another in my bone poem series.