Tag: poetry

It’s a dragonfly summer, all red, blue and green,
All sizes dart fast and crouch still.
Hundreds more dragons than ever I’ve seen,
Blithe masters of aerial skill.

It’s a dragonfly summer, big-eyed and lean,
Rainswept and sunbaked by turn,
But prism-bright dragons on fencepost and tree
seem to preach a creed we’ve yet to learn.

Cruise when you can and rest where you may,
And hover a while, just for fun.
Winds fall and rise and directions will change–
In the end there is only the sun

Of a dragonfly summer and its flash of four wings
and the zip-sliding, slow-gliding of time,
Of emeralds and rubies, sapphire gleams–
Deep-dreaming, eternal, sublime.

Utter Love
by Meg Winikates
December, 2005

I am in utter-love
With autumn light
In love with the air
That burns each golden
Leaf to crisply glowing shards
Of jagged sunlight.

I am in blue-deep love
With the belly laugh of
Autumn wind
In love with the tickling
Gusts of sharp amusement
Teasing hair and clothing into dance.

I am in rawboned love
With rosy boughs
Of baring trees, blushing
In the bright regard
Of afternoon, flaunting burnished
Colors to the whirling, yearning sky.

Origins
By Meg Winikates, April 2009

I love to guess the origins of myths,
say, ‘man stands under tree in thunderstorm,’
becomes ‘by the wild wrath of gods punished’
when lightning-struck, his grave unearthly warm.

Or, perhaps, a wailing waterfall
contains the tears of a heartbroken bride,
kept from her love across a chasm caused
by family rifts which rent the earth so wide.

For how else to explain a shooting star,
a face of stone, or two trees grown as one?
Why choose to see things as they are
if faith or fairy dust makes life more fun?

I’ll still give science preference by day–
but in the wilder hours let dreams hold sway.

I love April.  It’s National Poetry Month!  I get to post lots of poetry!

Um…which is, maybe, not so different from the usual around here.  Ooops.

But anyway, for those of you who are creatively inclined, Writer’s Digest has a very fun poem-a-day challenge here, with the opportunity to be chosen for publication in an ebook, and a NaNoWriMo style goody-for-you certificate if you write 30 poems.  I’m going to give it a whirl, and make this a personal poetry writing month as well as my usual poetry-absorbing-and-promoting.

Also, GottaBook is doing “30 poets/30 days,” with a new previously unpublished poem for kids being posted everyday, starting with today’s by Jack Prelutsky, whom I love.

Road salt spattered on the windows,
masterpiece of winter graffiti,
cannot hide the blue outside.
Pale as robin’s egg it deepens as
it stretches to the cloud kissed
vaulted sky, dreaming in cold
benevolence on all of us,
buses and trucks, highways and signboards.

My gaze flies up the window,
soul follows, but I cannot reach
the sky outside—road salt reality
blocks my way.

My wings are bold as the sun-dark sky,
blue as the dreams of songbirds and
sea gulls, light as the crystals that
wisp overhead:

Open the window.

This is an older poem of mine, for which I love the concept, but I don’t feel like the execution is all that good.  I like some of the phrasing, but it’s an idea I think I might need to revisit now that I have some distance on it, and rewrite to get the style the way I’d like it.  I sort of love the idea of trying to work in some subtle rhythmic structure and such, because even after a lot of work, free verse still can give me the heebie jeebies, and I think a tighter structure would suit this idea and this voice better.

The Mistimed Ones

Days pass.  You drive, you work, you eat.
Days pass.  You go forward, never looking back.
Days pass.  You do not see us, but we exist.

All around you, we, the mistimed ones
Born too early or too late, living
In the wrong era, living twice.

Old souls sit in cubicles and dream
of firelight and Fae-deep hills,
write ballads on computers.

New souls, meant for future, kinder worlds
Go to Hollywood or government
And find the world too narrow still.

You do not see us standing,
watching, cloaking ourselves in modern thought.
But all cloaks slip.  We know.
Days pass.  We notice, and we laugh.

I am in love with the hush of blank pages,

The sweet siren song of white space–

Waiting for imprints of thoughts leaving traces

Like jet trails and sea glass and a laugh-wrinkled face.