Magpie Tales is a blog “dedicated to the enjoyment of poets and writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like-minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well.” Each week, it offers an image as a writing prompt.
Magpie Tales is a blog “dedicated to the enjoyment of poets and writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like-minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well.” Each week, it offers an image as a writing prompt.
When poets dream,
the earth grows bones.
Stones hurl themselves
through windows
open to the lure of light,
only to return,
filled with shadows
that divine the dawn.
Magpie Tales is a blog “dedicated to the enjoyment of poets and writers, for the purpose of honing their craft, sharing it with like-minded bloggers, and keeping their muses alive and well.” Each week, it offers an image as a writing prompt.
Poseur
In place of words, I pose,
offering the self you rather,
naked of mind,
hidden heart.
In place of words, I play,
masked and costumed,
sightless
and
mute.
One of the advantages of being post menopausal is that I no longer get the raging PMS that — in retrospect — I think was responsible for messing up my various relationships, including that with my parents.
Back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, PMS was considered a fabricated rationale for plain ol’ female bitchiness. Now, we know better, and I know that what I (and my friends and family) had to suffer through was actually my PMDD.
It’s hard to describe what it felt like to go through those terrible fits of insanity to those who have never experienced it. So, at the time, I wrote this poem — which, I think, pretty much says it all.
A sliver of moon
like a sharpened claw
slits the underside of April,
sending clouds as heaving as stones
onto the roiling rim of earth.
It is time for the Tooth Mother’s coming.
She tears through my skin,
talons sharp as the moon,
eyes that slice, breasts like scythes
along my hungry tongue.
She breathes into my mouth
the bold remains of winter,
turning my cries to ice,
my thoughts to stones
that roll like clouds
along my ragged edge of mind.
To Walk in His
He built his palette
around the ragged colors
of her tortoise-shell calico,
piled like earth
in a sunny corner.
His worn soul
embraced the folds
of those crumpled old shoes,
shredded laces, wilted leather
scuffed with the stuff of a life
that beat paths through
fields of irises, sunflowers, wheat,
the streets of Arles, and
dreams lost to the night sky.
© Elaine Frankonis
Glory of the Snow —
like annual offerings
to the godly roots
of our grand old oak,
in thanks for surviving
another Northeast winter.
70
I had planned, for my 70th spring,
to blog my way down the East Coast,
searching out the names of those
I knew along the way,
planting new memories
that would grow old even
more slowly than I.
I would take my time,
sleep in my little SUV
if necessary, charge my laptop
as I drive, stop where
hot spots showed strongest,
keep my story going to no end.
That time had come. And gone.
And I no longer dream of
long distance running, taking
that last flight from anonymity.
Instead, I wander garden hot spots,
searching for the solitude
to rock instead of run,
to stop in time and
contemplate the passing
of Roger Ebert,
who was 70.
Wintersowing
It starts early,
this need for green,
as the land waits
in white quiet.
We dream a riot
of leaves greening
in the sun, calling
color from the deep
of a bland landscape.
Sunflower seeds, sowed
sheltered from the frost,
release the hopes
of wintered hearts and
suddenly spring green.
“The sun, the sun, and all we can become.”
(Theodore Roethke: What Can I Tell My Bones)
three cats sleeping
in the drifting sun;
later, they will tussle,
mock-biting, and then
they will sleep again,
follow the sun,
dream with their claws,
love with their tails.
It’s National Poetry Writing Month — 30 poems for thirty days.
Here goes #1.
Some say the world will end in fire,
a sudden spike of life and then the glory.
But for her, it was a slow fall into
the cold of oblivion, the bones of her face
sharding like ice, her fingers blue crystals
clutching frigid white sheets,
sliding toward the final winding.