Small Stones

At Marloe's suggestion, via River of Stones, I am going to attempt the Small Stones challenge for the month of July. The idea is to become more observant and to, each day, write a line that precisely captures a fully-engaged moment.



Stay tuned!

poetry

I wonder if anyone had ever made a poem
with front rhymes only, left like postscripts
for the careful reader. I will try to leave
a hidden message for you to find at your leisure
like so many other hidden gems, treasures
for the eyes that dare to trespass

poetry

The Lanyard - Billy Collins



The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.


No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.


She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.


Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth


that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

poetry

I Go Back To The House For A Book

     -Billy Collins
I turn around on the gravel and go back to the house for a book, something to read at the doctor's office, and while I am inside, running the finger of inquisition along a shelf, another me that did not bother to go back to the house for a book heads out on his own, rolls down the driveway, and swings left toward town, a ghost in his ghost car, another knot in the string of time, a good three minutes ahead of me — a spacing that will now continue for the rest of my life.

poetry

the green grass
resists the reversal
of time

as white snows still
pile up on
the colder planes

Poetry

Silent warrior
Perfecting deadly
Movement in newly
Greened fields

-- Erin
~~~~~~
This has been communication in motion (sent from my phone)

poetry

I've Nothing Intelligent to Say About the Moon
 - William Winfield Wright

It goes up, comes down, shines
light into the backyard.

When I am in love, the dark spots
outline the face of my beloved;

when I am in a boat, the brightness
scatters across the water.

One theory of its origin, surely
discredited by now, suggests a blob

of excess earth splashed out
of a roiling ocean of lava, another

the result of a collision, a glancing blow,
but in both cases the blunt reminder of loss.

Like a flashlight, it would reflect
in your pupils, make the snow

a kind of blue, be enough to find
your way to an unfamiliar building in the dark.

North of everything, it's the winter sky's
one constant ball, out at all hours,

a metaphor for the missing sun,
a shadow to the cold and tilted earth.

Poetry

This is my best friend
And don't I love her!
Today is her birthday,
So buy her another!

-- Erin
~~~~~~
This has been communication in motion (sent from my phone)

poetry

Beyond Recall



Nothing matters
to the dead,
that’s what’s so hard


for the rest of us
to take in --
their complete indifference

to our enticements,
our attempts to get in touch --
they aren’t observing us


from a discreet distance,
they aren’t listening
to a word we say --


you know that,
but you don’t believe it,
even deep in a cave


you don’t believe
in total darkness,
you keep waiting


for your eyes to adjust
and reveal your hand
in front of your face --


so how long a silence
will it take to convince us
that we’re the ones


who no longer exist,
as far as X is concerned,
and Y, that they’ve forgotten


every little thing
they knew about us,
what we told them


and what we didn’t
have to, even our names
mean nothing to them


now -- our throats ache
with all we might have said
the next time we saw them.


--Sharon Bryan

poetry

skin and years sheared
like so much fat
paired off a side of meat
wrapped in bandages,
sealed with luck
first thought is:
how thin she'll look
in her white dress