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“That yes” . . and other poems to the Last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” W.B. Yeats

These responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, in praise of all hallelujah, perfect and fractured, June 20, are painfully wise and honest and moving to the point of tears. Times are hard, no doubt about it. Well done, Bozhidar Pangelov (bogan), Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brooks, Debbie Felio, Carol Mikoda, and Marta Pombo Sallés. Thanks also to artist/poet Sonja Benskin Myers for including her illustration along with one of her poems.

So here is our gift to enrich your day. Please do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.

Hallelujah for the deprived

the church (is) carved
on a steep hill

on broken glass
images
crunched under the footsteps of wild animals
which rarely pass by
pieces of wind and stone slabs
falling from names
(the names go away)

we sold our lives
a hand cuts off the wrist
no live cypress trees
or birds
the past starts
and the shadows do not move into the grave
„poor my Jorik“
you have never been born

those deprived of time
cannot die
they do not know how

the folded pin is the eye

© 2018, bogpan (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия, блог за авторска поезия)

hallelujah unison

arthritic hands clasp and hurt each other
eyes squeeze and phosphenes march
“hallelujah,” she whispers

miles away there is a beheading
“hallelujah!” they shout

miles away a child is born
“hallelujah,” say the three
(one inaudibly)

miles away there is home in the headlights
miles away a bell tower reverberates
miles away a monitor flatlines

and miles away a man sees someone waiting for him under a streetlight
shifting her feet
seeing him
and catching her breath

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)

Hallelujahs

My steady breath and regular beat of my heart as I wake is a fire goaded from the snuffed out taper
of yesterday.

Welcome shouts and hugs from my family, opens petals of wonder releases sweet fragrance of warmth.

Thankyous from the boss of all my efforts curves into smiles of bairns released into the arms of aggrieved parents.

Hallelujahs out of broken, divorced, stamped out, water logged ashes lick and dance heat and light in eyes renewed.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

That Yes

of your breath as it lets go into the fresher air opportunity offers with open hands,

an apology for pain given from the giver heals the sores and blemishes, some self inflicted, hands

over a cup of tea, coffee or glass of fresh greeting
A wholesome kiss and gleam gladdened eyes

without expectation of return or reparation,
sip down electricity that sparkles your bones.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

How Fragments Make

room for new making
You are the better maker.

Muscle and skin and idea undone
reveal shapes unconsidered.

Pieces of belief disassembled
into nonsense make a different sense.

Necessary chaos you can tangle
Into another order. Praise the entangled.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

No Hallelujahs

without darkness
without questions
without nonsense

No hallelujahs

without failure
without mistakes
without doubt

No hallelujahs

without hard decisions
without dislocation
without recovery

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

CODA

Blood
Rage
Objectification
Killing
Exclusion
Neglect

How long we wait
Again for righteousness
Lifting up the
Lives of the lost
Echoing the
Longing for
Universal
Justice
And
Honor

© 2018, deb y felio

glory be

a host of horrors greet us each day
multitudes of madnesses
economies of scale sing hymns
ailing rotting-on-the-inside riffraff
make holy homemade videos
that go virulently viral in stupefying style
scores bursting at the seams about to crack

en masse we raise voices
This! Life! is astonishing
life on earth
with its variegations in virtue
imperfections impressive in their number
it is good nevertheless this creation

find a statue or painting of god
that’s not a little bit broken
let alone one of us humans

Rejoice!
ever-morphing clouds
roll across the storm sky
to release, in their fractures,
photon beams
across swarming humanity’s home
until Hallelujah! a stunning sunset show

© 2018, Carol Mikoda

:: numbers ::

:: numbers ::

i limped.

into the cathedral.
my life will be sorted,
if i bought the book @
£1.99, said suffering is
good.

i looked at the boys,
looked at the floor,
read ecclesiastes,
we are as dust,

and limped out.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

men in the village, are older now. the moth returns.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Dance of Hope

Wrapped in orange dress
of hope is the dance.
Fluttering veil seals
renewed serene bliss.

Fans turn in the air
tasting this new flair
of hope tied in rope,
invisible thread
that beats with the heart.

Bathing in moonlight
of newly found joy
I danced my hope with
a fluttering veil
and turned my fans in
the winds of a change.

© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)

ERRATUM

Paul’s poem below is from Tuesday, June 19 responses to the Wednesday Writing Prompt, the lesser being of a lesser god, June 13. His poem was posted incorrectly.  You can use the link to read the entire collection, which is quite wonderful.

Gust Is Deaf, Hills Are Blind,

trees can’t walk properly,
Flowers twitch haphazardly.

Grass is mute, rivers are dumb.
Nature is differently abled.

Mountains are too tall,
struggle to talk when they can’t

bend a knee, get down to those smaller
who are in awe when all mountains need

is to speak face to face , dispel their myth.
Same with water that rushes by,

no time to stand and stare, moments pass
before they have time to fully comprehend.

Flux needs a still moment but has to go on.
Still waters wish they could rush.

All hankers after what it Is not,
Cannot accept their place as their lot.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration * History * Imagination)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

 

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“Scaffold” . . . and other Responses to Wednesday Writing Prompt

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” Ursula K. Le Guin

These responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, the lesser being of a lesser god, June 13 certainly take us through time and geography, touch lightly or deeply on theme, all while warming our hearts and spinning our minds along the way.  Enjoy! and Thanks! to Paul Brookes, Irene Emanuel, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Marta Pombo Salés. These poets seem always up for a challenge.

Thanks also and a warm welcome to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt to Debbie Felio, Carol Mikoda and Anne G. Myles, accomplished writers all.  Debbie’s work was featured before on The Poet by Day but not for Wednesday Writing Prompt, so here she is introduced in this context.

Join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome to share their work on theme.

Least of These

I find myself
in losing self
amid the grander
moments in creation

for why would I
settle as the larger
of the lesser
among so little

grant me the serenity
to seek the enormity
of a great God’s creativity

lesser me at the edge
of Grand Canyon’s
cragged colors

lesser me in the depths
and breadths
of roaring oceans

lesser me in the wonders
of rainbows and cloud banks
snowstorms and tornados

lesser me counted
as one of millions
stars and galaxies

never am I so grand
as when the Grandest
includes in His resume
the lesser me.

© 2018, Deb Felio

Debbie Felio

DEBBIE FELIO is a poet/witness living and writing in Boulder, Colorado

 

 

Death’s Immensity

Stand next to one wall, let’s say
the north side, of a massive
building. Look up into the
sky, noticing only a
few puffs of clouds. Sweep your eyes
back down, catching sight of this
wall — gray, smooth, unending — and

recall it.

Instantly, the personal fantasy of
existence disintegrates,
leaving only wisps. Lungs

empty,

breath sucked away.
Only flatness,
a loss of all
color and detail.
Once again,
know Death
and be

paralyzed.

© 2018, Carol Mikoda

Carol Mikoda

CAROL MIKODA teaches writing and new teachers in upstate New York. She lives in the country where she walks in the woods, studies the sky to photograph clouds, and grows vegetables and flowers. She also sings and plays piano, guitar, and bass. Although she enjoys travel, her cat, Zen Li Shou, would rather she stayed home.

*

Scaffold

For Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr, d. 1660

1.

The only woman to be taken to the scaffold twice.

In October, you watched your friends drop,

then they let you go. In May you came back

and the second time it was for real.

Both times they marched you the last mile

flanked by soldiers, drummers, ministers —

the charivari of execution. You said

It is the greatest joy I can enjoy in this world.

 

I hunt online to see what you saw before you,

gaze lifted, sure and unrepentant:

the raw wood architecture of terror

set up on Boston Neck,

a strange delicacy in it perhaps;

its silence, its certainty, full stop.

The light that was the frailest metaphor

pouring through the noose.

2.

Scaffolding, as educators call it,

means how you model or demonstrate

the way to solve a problem,

how you build on students’ experiences

adding support, until in time

they can do it for themselves.

 

When the terror of the present gripped me

I wanted to write your story,

attempt to interweave it with my own,

tell what happened while it was possible.

By the time I reached the end, I hoped

(though I no longer believed what you did

as I’d tried to many years ago

and it almost crushed me)

you would teach me to be brave.

3.

Before they led imaginary

John Proctor to the scaffold,

before he thought better of it,

before he chose the honor of his name,

he bellowed in desire

I want my life!

4.

The poet said in workshop:

The scaffolding of a poem is its skeleton.

Consider the poem as a body;

what’s keeping it upright?

What are the rules that keep it alive,

that build its world?

 

I couldn’t help but smile.

I saw that after all it was this I got:

in middle age as you were,

you helped bring me back to poetry

and left me there, lesser, grateful,

heart pounding with desire

to walk and keep on walking

in my own recovered light.

© 2018, Anne G. Myles

ANNE G. MYLES, originally from the east coast, and now  Associate Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, specializing in early American literature. You can find some of my earlier academic thoughts about Mary Dyer in her Wikipedia entry, as I recently learned to my surprise. I have been drawn back to my lost origins in creative writing in the past year or so, and poetry (the form in which I was trained) even more recently, including but not limited to working on a series of Mary Dyer poems. I hope to begin sending work out soon. I have a blog about matters related to my recovering my creative voice at “How public — like a Blog –,” annegolda.blog

*

My god is

Imperfect, a perfect image for me.
Humbled by its mistakes.

My god is a mistake.
A wrong answer,

Differently abled.
Its winters often in spring.

Its summers sometime in autumn.
My god is a fracture, a flaw.

Gender fluid. Defined by its
Inhumanity, it is complete

in its incompleteness. Aspires
not to aspire. My god is contradiction,

counter intuitive. Fresh in its decay.
Its more is always less. Thank god.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration * History * Imagination)

Gust Is Deaf, Hills Are Blind,

 

trees can’t walk properly,
Flowers twitch haphazardly.

Grass is mute, rivers are dumb.
Nature is differently abled.

Mountains are too tall,
struggle to talk when they can’t

bend a knee, get down to those smaller
who are in awe when all mountains need

is to speak face to face , dispel their myth.
Same with water that rushes by,

no time to stand and stare, moments pass
before they have time to fully comprehend.

Flux needs a still moment but has to go on.
Still waters wish they could rush.

All hankers after what it Is not,
Cannot accept their place as their lot.

       ONE NIGHT ON CRADLE MOUNTAIN—-TASMANIA
Never before, nor ever again
will there be such a special night;
the night a possum stopped at my feet
and allowed my touch without fright.
Glancing round the purple-black,
I saw a wondrous sight;
sparkle-threads of countless stars
roped round the Milky Way;
back-dropped moon-beams
filigreed in shining silver ray.
Thrilled beyond coherent thought,
I blended with this dream
and optically imprinted
that empyreal starry scene.
Cradle Mountain calls to me,
with haunting “siren” powers;
“come back and stay,
you’ll be entranced,
your life forever ours.”

© 2018, Irene Emanuel

. the robe.

 

kept in a box, precious.

lifted down for those to see,
that care.

did the understanding come,
the idea that all old things
are wanted, needed for their story.

not discarded on higher ground,
where dust and moth abound.

the lesser garment became prefered,
as the last shall become the first.

we shall look at the photographs.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (poetry and illustration below)

shot_1399971890954

 

.. bad night dreaming ..

 

dreamed of devastation,           flew miles        low

over concrete .   skeletons,      bones of the thing.

 

all is dust, as dust we have become.                 slow.

 

grey.    nothing moves here no more.          no sighs.

 

they have forgotten us.        we have forgotten them.

 

are we  now the bones of what we were?

 

bad night dreaming.

 

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

 

Llac de Banyoles copy

Confidence

With ebbs and flows
like sea and lake waters
the ground was trembling,
magnificent earthquake
confidence was at stake.
Wanted to do your best
so never felt at rest
you are too self-demanding
so confidence faded.
Too much self-exigency
leave me please, let me be
tell it now.
That parent, sister, brother,
that relative of yours
or that good friend or lover
if not, the teacher you had
someone said: great, keep up
or someone said, instead,
I think you have no talent
you will not earn a living
you are now wasting your time.
Your confidence fluctuating.
Ghosts of self-exigency
ghosts of negative people
let them vanish.
Hateful comparisons,
like storms amid the sea
till everything seems awash,
like strong winds on Earth
till each house looks swept,
mercilessly taken.
What light dwells in your soul
what thoughts in your mind
this is not to be disregarded,
disrespected or dismissed.
From your uniqueness, your creation
comes as a true revelation.
Let the ghosts of comparison
fade away from the sea
from the land you inhabit.
As the sun shines on you
so will confidence.

© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

 

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NOTIONS OF THE SACRED: Poetry as Spritual Practice

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“Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.” W.H. Auden

Originally published d in The BeZine.

When we move on in the arc of our lives – to center – we cross the threshold into that place from which all things emanate – the sacred space of poetry and indeed all art and creativity. We leave behind the cacophony of assumptions and received wisdom to rest in Rumi’s field – a place he says is “beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing.” We cross the threshold into a w-h-o-l-l-y, place – a place Rumi tells us the “world is too full to talk about.” The ideal of this field reminds me very much of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, where all the hallelujah’s – broken or whole – are equal. And so it is with us and with our poetry, which as a spiritual practice brings balance and sacredness into our lives.

This business of taking up our pens involves more than learning the technical rudiments, the history of our craft and its key players. It requires of us a trust in ourselves. It requires letting go of the expectation of understanding everything. We learn to embrace mystery and ambiguity. We learn to sit with process and to sit with the poems we are drawn to or the poetry we write . . . or, perhaps which writes us. We allow the visions, the word-play, the colors, tones and cadence to work on us. Whether we share our poems with others or not, whether we are amateur or professional, is irrelevant. What matters is that we go on the hero’s journey and we come back with a gift.

When we write, we are like Rilke’s “Swan” …

“when he nervously lets himself down
into the water, which receives him gaily
and which flows joyfully under
and after him, wave after wave,
while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm,
is pleased to be carried, each moment more fully grown,
more like a king, further and further on.”

Sacred space always reveals the unexpected. We are always changed, though the change may be subtle. What might come up are the daily concerns – how to make it through the day – or the current pain: the loss of a loved one, abandonment, ills of body and mind, concerns for children … Joy! and Gratitude! As we grow “more like a king, further and further on,”  our sacred space may reveal something about the greater mysteries…

“does it matter after all, the curiosities

when fish and water are one
when light and dark are indistinguishable
when we are neither content nor discontent
when questions cease and ideologies melt
when there is no helping and no taking

. . . there is this” [© Jamie Dedes]

enso

And “this” is well represented by the Buddhist ensō illustrated above. It is meant to express that moment when the mind is still, allowing for creation. It symbolizes enlightenment. I’m sure all faiths have similar concepts. From a Christian perspective – perhaps the discussion would be about the “gaze of faith” and claritas (Thomas Aquinas) –  “intellectual light,” illumination. In Buddhism, traditionally this ensō is done as a part of spiritual practice and it is a kind of meditation in the way that all creative efforts are meditation.

“Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals to us what is alive in us. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, writing requires a real act of trust. We have to say to ourselves: ‘I do not yet know what I carry in my heart, but I trust that it will emerge as I write.’ Writing is like giving away the few loaves and fishes one has, trusting that they will multiply in the giving. Once we dare to ‘give away’ on paper the few thoughts that come to us, we start discovering how much is hidden underneath these thoughts and gradually come in touch with our own riches.” ‪‎Henri Nouwen‬ REFLECTIONS ON THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION (unpublished) http://www.henrinouwen.org

So trust that through your poetry you will enter that field where there is no right doing or wrong doing and …

“The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life. “ [Love After Love, © Derrick Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948–1984 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987)

© 2016, essay and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Ensō (c. 2000) by Kanjuro Shibata XX under CC BY-SA 3.0

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“Fog” , “This Poem Must Be Taken Literally” . . . and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

“The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.

“If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

The theme for Wednesday Writing Prompt, awakening on our rockey rebel road, June 6, 2018, was to share with us the poet in non-ordinary reality, the doorways that lead from the physical to the spiritual. This was perhaps not the easiest of prompts but these poets rose to the occasion with depth and panache. Lovely! 

Thank you Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pangelov and Anjum Wasim Dar. Bravo!

A warm welcome to poet, writer and educator, Michele Stepto, new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. I included a link below to her book, which looks fascinating.  It’s on my reading list.

Enjoy this fine collection with its profound delights and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. Links to each poet’s site are included below so that you can visit, read more of their work, and get to know them.

Fog

She received as a gift a carpet
with fog in it and moved
the furniture and rolled
the carpet out in the middle
of the room and found
that fog was rising out of it
in little wisps
and that when she stood
at the edge of it it
was just like standing at the edge of a cliff
high up over the ocean in the evening
when the fog is coming in

She moved the furniture back
and it did not
fall through the carpet
it did not disappear
she sat down in her old
armchair next to the lamp
and thought
she was floating in mid-air
on a foggy day
or flying a plane in the fog
everything feeling pleasantly
cold and damp as she closed her eyes

She sat there for a long while
dreaming about trees seen in fog
and things coming toward you
out of the fog small birds
who stayed put and didn’t fly in the fog
as she was staying put
now in her chair
their heads tucked
under their wings and dreaming
as she was of paradise
of their own Shambhala
high in the mountains
girdled in fog
or clouds
it hardly
mattered

© 2018, Michele Stepto 

Michele Stepto

MICHELE STEPTO: I have taught literature and writing at Yale University for many years, and recently at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. My work has appeared online at Verse-Virtual, What Rough Beast (at Indolentbooks.com), Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, Mirror Dance, Lacuna Journal, and One Sentence Poems, which nominated “The Unfinished Poem” for a Pushcart Prize this year. Along with my son Gabriel, I translated from the original Spanish Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World.

445px-charlotte_corday

„Убийството на Марат“, Бодри, (1868)

“Miss Corde was reading Plutarch by night the books then used to be taken seriously” Zbigniew Herbert

(Adam Lux – Meditations)

Miss (or already, why not, Missis)
is reading.
So did she before getting married. The revolution of 1960s All is Love is over.
She used to sleep in tents. Why not?
The freedom has to be defended.
Drums, fires, the screams:
“Down with! Who doesn’t jump is.”
Rumble behind the walls. Marat is. Alive? Death? Used to live?
The time is traveling. The crown’s refined hat.
The hair short. With all the colors.
“In a dress like a blue rock.”
Obelisk? Yes! of passing from
necessity to
necessity (for survival).
Mrs. Corde, is reading. The Game of …
She’s dreaming. “All is love”.
The day is the most usual.

Charlotte?
She administrated justice.
The falling stars are glowing.

Democratic changes in Bulgaria started after the Berlin Wall in 1989 Jean Paul Marat, a prominent French Revolution. Charlotte Conde is his murderer. https://shortprose.blog

© 2018, bogpan [Bozhidar Pangelov] (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

REALM

Sleep deprivation
May lead to conversation
That you wake up inthemiddleof
Even though it is you who is talking.

The Goddess of Sleeplessness
In that other underworld
Has made you an emissary of her
Realm,
And conferred on you
The demigod’s trick
Of creating monsters.
Taillights
Become eyes…

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)

A Smooth Skin

is ugly. Trace beauty
in bloody edges of scars.
Tattoo your face and hands
with raw wounds. Glow.
Bruises brighten your looks.
Pimples and spots mark sexiness.
Wrinkles entice awe.
The look is all in scabs.

Containers

do not contain. Vacuum
is packed with it all.

I wish you were more obtuse.
I can’t understand this clarity.

All is tightly enclosed in open space.
All is nebulous.

Please talk in riddles. Plain
Sentences confuse my head.

Exactitude is imprecise.
Clarity is obscurity.

Distance is not a measure.
I need you to be woolly with words.

Only The

incompetent do their jobs properly.
Ensure you are only partly trained.

Half skilled emergency services save lives.
It’s what you don’t know that counts.

Amateurs are the only professionals.
Fully trained and experienced cause accidents.

Complete competency leads to lack of trust.
Once experienced you are useless to society.

Successful people are always trainees.
They are oil in the cogs, ensure smooth running.

Mistakes ensure a job is done thoroughly.
They ensure society is rectified.

Be Promising

There are no promises.
Money does not exist.
Nothing to breach.
No agreements or vows.

One can never be broken.
You can never be on one.
No laws, no lines can’t be crossed.
You promise not to promise.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

This Poem Must Be Taken Literally

My body is a rainbow
My blood is an explosion
My heart is a rusty cage
These are not metaphors

Please take this literally
That cloud is my opinion
That road is an orange
That wish is my house
That burnt toast is my belonging

These are not metaphors
This hand is a metal spade
This foot is a knife edge
This mouth is a dark valley
These words are made of light

This is not a poem
This is the ultimate answer.
This tells you how to live
This tells you the only truth

This Mop And Bucket

are poetry to me.
My pen is a mop

I stick in a bucket
of disinfectant floor cleaner

pull out mop sodden
with words and splash

them backwards and forwards
slop lines one after the other

Until the floor fair shines,
My mop is dry, needs another dip.

I squeeze out the gunk
back into the bucket.

More the floor shines,
dirtier the bucketful gets.

A good poem is a clean floor.

© 2018, Paul Brookes  (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

. reading for anna .

 

carrying the book, gently,
i find that jesus
is off the wall again.

breeze from the doors
blows him and cobwebbed minds
away,
as i write the small book,
on black keys of words.

gentle here this morning,
sun dreams in,
quiet in all the rooms,
and arms held high,
i come into the morning,
with string and sealing wax.
sbm.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.valley of the widow.

grey day, rain.
squeaky bath taps.
this is the valley
of the widow.

this is the day.
writing the wall,
trees stand tall.

yellow flags, the route,
to another place

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

There Is Someone

There is someone who talks to me
And keeps me waiting-
If only I could see The Spirit
Which I feel close by, yet so far

A bar on thoughts and actions,
I cannot think because my mind is quiet
And not moving or stirring
Lest the sweet words of The Spirit
May not find their way in-
And I may crush the tender layer thin

In between which keeps us bound,

I cannot let go the joy
I have found in my heart
at hearing the mellifluous melody
of the affectionate aura around,

which seeps into my soul to make peace
and washes smoothly away the tears
and the fears so deep,
I can now sleep with ease

For I cannot speak of the
Good Night Prayer
That descends in time so rare
my soul, to repair

And I cannot say that if I wake
Life may be like a snow flake
White and pure and sure, as
The Angels will come to Heaven, take.

© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY