Saturday, August 27, 2022

Family Heirlooms

Shame slips in, hooded in the cover of darkness

Insidious, it begins its work, undetected until

A landslide leaves you, stunned suffocation-

Shock is a sneaky way to rewrite a story


And while you begin the work of removing

Heavy narratives and half truths, breathlessly swimming

Inside a thickness of what you've been told is yours

The poet has opined as much (in prior drivel)


Then stopping to sit, a rare shaft of light

Brightens what has yet to be considered

And sudden expansion replicates-

You write lines that move and hold true



Monday, August 8, 2022

How Shameful

How shameful to be pulled 

So far 

        (Society’s collar and leash)

From the fraught moments of childbirth 

A baby then breastfed

Warmed by more than milk-

        (A nourishment inherent in this pause)


Sacred 


Bathing in retrospective sweetness

The miraculousness of a milestone 


Met and forgotten

        (Frivolously filed away, a new day)


New strangers dressed up as years 

        (Wedged and hardened, sticky)

Bloated rings, an overgrown Elm 

Brittle bark flakes, reveals and conceals-

          (An easily contained ecosystem)


Lurking beneath the surface 

Insidious and darling, all of it