my first time aboard the poetry bus

My cat Willow is so secure that she is practically spook-proof but every once in awhile she will begin to exhibit alarm over something, and, if I can catch that moment and say to her, "Scarwy" she calms right down. Acknowledging and validating her trepidation seems to negate her tension. It is with this in mind that I jump aboard The Poetry Bus for the first time. This week's host is Argent, author of Delusions of Adequacy, and her prompts were to write something funny, i.e., "Excursion to the Comedy Store," or to write about unrequited love, i.e., "Tunnel (of unrequited) Love" - or a combination of both if desired. The Poetry Bus is sponsored by Totalfeekineejit, who lists in his sidebar the Poetry Bus Global Tour Dates. That is about all I know right now about The Poetry Bus, except I selected the unrequited love idea and .......this is a verwy scarwy ride for me!


Adam, my song

Adam, my song -
    The verse of our youth
    is a deep hum inside me
an I-remember-I-will-remember-I-will-
always-remember-we-were-so-
young-and-I-long-ago-
forgave-you-
sound

You gave your children rhyming names,
a refrain repeated five times, and once
you called me at Christmas
with the chorus of their
carols ringing in the
background.

In the background since some have
said to me if only . . .,  I nodded in
time to the music that danced
between them and the
spouse - appreciating
the beat of their
discontent.

I may grow old dreaming of you,
Adam, my song - singing a
diminished melody until
I hush my song
and the hum
becomes
nothing
but
Om.

~by MLM Lydia ©
.

Air Mail: a poem

Air Mail


Luftpost preserved:

knotty blue thoughts
inbound from you,
sorting your manhood
in '72 ..... across the sea

over my head
your desires for me.

I read all your lines
but never the spaces
never the things that you
did not confide, that

the parade of envelopes
held you inside.

You are still there
still young, still free
maybe coming home to find
I removed you from the wrappers

and sealed you in my mind.


© MLydiaM "Lydia"

Photos: Google images

`

Old Oak - August 2007

I'm trying something scary and different by posting one of my poems.

There were years in my past when I wrote lots of them, and most are quite mediocre. But when I read through them they serve as a looking glass into my troubled, searching-for-love teen and young adult years. They mirror the firecracker creativity fueled by alcohol in my early days of drinking. Later, they are a gasp of sick ego and longing for wholeness as alcoholism grabbed hold of my life. Finally, from the tender healing of early sobriety, they manifest a sigh...and then they stopped all together. I have speculation but no explanation for this: I wrote a poem for Mike to celebrate our wedding in 1995 and after that no more poetry came. Not until last August when this one did, and none since.

I want to acknowledge Marlys Marshall Styne who delights with her rictameters at Write Your Life!, and for advocating "writing for everyone." How empowering is that?! I ordered her book, Reinventing Myself - Memoirs of a Retired Professor from Amazon.com and it arrived this weekend. I'm anxious to read it after seeing the table of contents.

I'm not going to over-think these poems of mine, for which poetry review have a different meaning. On a personal level they really are a review of key stages of my life, mostly brazen vestiges of a careless past. Not the easiest things for me to review, let's say. Depending upon how this particular foray into sharing the most recent one goes, I might select more of those old poems to post. Or not.

Old Oak - August 2007

You sprawling giant

gave up one bough near

targets too precious and sealed your fate there

on the hill beside a middle school parking lot

that borders the soccer field where once stood

the acorn-bearing community you grew with 300 years ago.

The twisted limb you let loose after a gentle summer rain was greater than

trunks of the 100-year-old oaks growing on either side of the second soccer lawn

a block from the chipping machine that now sings with your branches.

It was an impressive, heavy bough full of green life

but your wound showed weakness inside despite the

smooth, tight-grained beauty of

these delicious-smelling logs

that must be

cleared quickly

before a new year of

history lessons take root.

(c) M Lydia M, 2007