Gray Dreams

Soft rooms filled with lost people,
where no one's talking and yet
the very silence is an angry scream.
She cowers in the shadowy corner,
thinking her old thoughts.
A single tear crawls down
the smooth face of the window,
fades into the flatness that is her life,
while the rain washes the world away.

#29. The World Is On Fire

The world is on fire.  
The world is drowning.  
The world is dying.
 
Arctic ice fragments off
in chunks the size of New York City.
The oceans are rising, warming, dying.    
Birds are falling out of the skies.  
Dozens of species going extinct.  
The rainforests are disappearing,
flames pillage the southwest,
incinerating miles of lives.
Deadly hurricanes pummel the coasts. 
A pandemic has killed 

a million people worldwide.

The world is on fire.
The world is drowning.
The world is dying.

summer still echoes

leaves begin falling

yet summer still echoes

DAY 77 - SPRING REVERIE

DAY 77 -  SPRING REVERIE

(77/365)

SPRING REVERIE

She'd forgotten the sound the wind

made in the tree tops after winter,

a murmurous, whispery music 

rustling through new leaves,

sublime in verdant glory.

She remembered spring nights,

darkness softly comforting,

how it smelled when it rained,

earth unfailingly wiped clean,

the sound of raindrops when 

they bounced off new leaves.

In this moment that is hers alone,

she waits to forget to remember.

The truth is that life is fleeting, 

with solitary moments to be savored.

In the end, that is the real prize.

*comments welcome

For Jane Mulally Olson - Forty-five Years

 Visitation Class of 1965

For Jane Mulally Olson

 

Forty-five Years

Come, stitch together memories,

we'll weave a story of the years

and the kinship we have shared.

School brought us together,

we watched each other grow.

Now we are forever connected

by a small crescent-shaped

piece of the past.

 

Who can forget high school,

where, stumbling and stammering,

we first began adult life.

Most of the good life has offered

is behind rather than ahead;

but for now, for blessed now, there's laughing

and remembering and celebrating to do.

Instead of gray hair and wrinkles,

let's choose instead to see ourselves

as the sleek young women we once were.

 

Life after graduation was richly embroidered

with adventure and divergent experiences:

careers, college, marriage, babies, divorce,

new husbands, more babies, new careers.

There was always something challenging waiting.

Then, suddenly, there were major changes,

adjustments and rearrangements.

Children grew up and left home,

parents died, we became grandparents,

spouses retired, we retired.

 

Through it all, we stayed strong and alive.

Until this past spring. On April 28,

our friend and classmate, Jane Mullaly Olson, died,

the first of us to go. Jane touched all our lives,

some for a brief moment, others lost a life-long friend.

Remember Jane's story, how she lived her life 

with joy in spite of adversity and sickness.

And remember too, there are still more chapters

to be written for the Class of 1965, 

not for school, but for life.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS

 

LOOKING FOR THE MOON

LOOKING FOR THE MOON

The night June-warm,

she writes late into the evening,

her only companions the moths

pressed against the screen,

seduced by the lamp's sultry glow.

From the darkness they watch, 

hypnotized, unable to break away,

their quest to find love endless.