How Important It Must Be

- A Poem for Dottie -

How important it must be,

this time, just sitting here,

backs against a sand dune,

and watching the ocean’s tides

roll in and back out, carrying

with them tiny grains of sand,

time worn, ancient, older by far

than us just sitting here, watching,

silent and remembering other tides

rolling in and back out, carrying us. 

It is September

 

 - A Poem for Abby -

It is September, and a cool breeze

reminds us of summer’s passing and autumn

just around the corner, blowing in. The kids,

if they haven’t yet, will be starting school soon,

the sounds of football and marching bands in the air

and the days, growing shorter, darker before dinner,

dusk and the streetlights coming on, lighting our way

home to the memories of our own Septembers,

summers passing and autumn just around the corner,

the squeak of new shoes on a linoleum floor, chalk dust

coating our fingers and wiped on new trousers, the warning

to keep them clean, as we practiced our letters and numbers,

adding them up and subtracting them, times tables memorized,

learning to divide, readying us for the divisions yet to come

in the years ahead, loves lost and old friends gone, retired

to Florida, snowbirds, or gone the way of life, dying early,

leaving us alone, remembering in the cool breeze of September.

Step Forward

Step forward, confident, onto the next step

of the ladder leading to the heavens,

where the moon and the stars shine, brilliant

in the dark skies above us, as you, too,

will shine in the darkness, stepping up,

a bright light in a world waiting, crying out for you.

Beauty Restored

This spring I tore out a garden past

it’s prime with a hoe and a rake and a spade

and the sweat and dust of exertion, stripped

it down to bare earth, a tangle of roots and rocks

removed, and unsure what to do with it, let it sit,

the only thing growing there the weeds I’d pluck out

in passing, tossed on the compost heap to wither and die.

 

A barren garden cries out for beauty, the green of new growth

and color, so I revived the soil with loam and peat and spread

it thick with wildflower seeds, and watered and waited, watched

the little shoots in darkness push through to sunshine,

a velvet covering of green inching upward to leaves and stalks,

one inch, then two, and higher still, little colored buds beginning,

white and yellow, pink and blue and purple, opening to flower

and turning this garden space into a tiny meadow, the buzz

of bees arriving and new flowers dancing in the breeze, beauty restored,

and with it, me, a garden past my prime, a tangle of roots and rocks.