What is your greatest fear?
Finish it with silliness.
Spiders stumbling in roller skates,
tyrants donning absurd apparel,
cobras turned jack-in-the-box,
full moon a deflating balloon.
A bit of whimsy bordering on
nonsense disarms the boogeyman.
Don’t wait for your father –
he’s not coming.
Save yourself with joy,
for laughter is fear’s nemesis.
This poem was written during a Harry Potter marathon with my friend Debbie M. while watching the third movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
The key
to opening
my chamber
of secrets
is consistency.
Showing oneself
worthy of trust,
a companion
who arrives.
There is something
to be said for
presence,
the constant knowing
that someone can
be counted on
to exist
when others
are virtual.
This poem was written during a Harry Potter marathon with my friend Debbie M. while watching the second movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
An orchid appeared
on my counter last week.
It’s stick-straight stems
point proudly skyward
upholding regal blooms
of white with
painted purple lips.
Waxy long leaves
splay around the base
as though palms upturned
in adoration.
Imagine my pleasure
upon discovering that
the beautiful blossoms
in question were left
for me by my daughter.
Symbolic of elegance
and fertility,
love and respect.
Printed directions
attached to a stick
explain care and feeding,
so my granddaughter
places three ice cubes
reverently just above the roots
and waits to see
what happens next.
Today was exhausting! I am about to fall in bed, but must share the victories of my day.
There is still more to do, but that is all for one day. I am going to relax in my comfy quarters for the last night of my retreat and enjoy one more glorious morning of tea and writing when I awake.
Goodbye, my dear friend.
“The earth has arranged her skirts
and taken you back so tenderly.”
I know you have “vanished
into something better-”
“the dark hug of time.”
What is it like “after the last day?”
“Did you float into the sky?”
I know “you never intended
to be in this world,”
yet you still got on with
“building the universe.”
“Everything dies at last and too soon,’
so I will bathe in the
“moon’s bone-white eye”
while whispering
“prayers made of grass”
until “all the locks click open.”
No matter how “humble the effort,”
I will “move my grains on a hillside”
one by one if need be
for “neither power nor powerlessness
will have me entirely”
and “I am willing to be dazzled.”
Yes, “my spirit carries within it the thorn,”
but I “keep on trudging.”
And every so often
“green leaves emerge from the tips of my fingers.”
A “fox on his feet of silk” found
“a bride married to amazement.”
I “have changed my life,”
“announced my place in the family of things,”
and “invented the dance with the wind,” for
“death is a little way away from everywhere.”
This is the very reason that
“every morning the world is created.”
Thank you for living
“your one wild and precious life.”
I will “remember your beloved name”
until I am “washed out of my bones”
because “death isn’t darkness after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us.”
rebekahjmarshall 