Category: poem

Floating lilypad. Hannah Lyles.

The Importance of Roots

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What sustains a lilypad
as it grows, before it breaks
the water’s surface?
Faith. Hope that it will
be touched by the sun.

A lilypad cannot rest on the water
without making the journey
from the depths; from the darkness
of the invisible bottom.

And even when it stands tall,
pad floating with the ripples
of the push and pull of tides,
the roots are firmly stuck
in the wet, muddy earth
of the lake bed.

They sing: remember the roots.
Do not celebrate the beauty of blooms
without honoring the soil’s fertility.
Our beginnings, our earthy starts,
are what bind us to this life.

Clouds

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How long does a cloud live:

a short, wet fleeting life

concentrated on the burden

of letting go. Joy is saying

no more holding on, no more

water, no more dust,

no more hail, no more.

 

Does a cloud suffer from

rootlessness? The cirrus is

an airy nomad moving

like lost feathers from a pillow.

Does it get sick of being

unbearably light? A refugee

of night and day. A member

of the neverending diaspora.

 

Do clouds get lonely

floating alone

in an expanse of blue sky?

Do the cotton-ball cumulus

brothers and sisters get tired

of sharing space?

Do they yearn to touch

the earth like a lover:

gently, softly, often?

Does the fog wish for weight;

to embody, to be present

and permanent?

Do clouds know they are loved

no matter how menacing

they look?

 

Do they see more than us

and hold onto it like a tragedy

or a comedy?

Do clouds try to tell us

secrets? Do we know how

to read their wisdom

before it’s too late?

 

Do clouds spend more

of their lives looking

up or looking down?

Is it hard being in between;

the gatekeepers of the earth

and beyond?

Does this make them

want to fall into the ocean

and never get back up?

March Morning

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The leaf cups my body

as if to say

I am enough.

Shielded from the sun,

I sleep in a cocoon

of green.

The memory of the mild

winter is faded like

translucent skin.

The mandarin tree is

my home within a home;

a human family live

in a dark box nearby

with openings

that are mostly closed.

Every morning

the train horn

b  l  o  w  s.

I know of this machine

because my mother transmitted

her knowledge through webbed feet:

our ancestors were born near the tracks.

How does it feel to be a lily pad

hanging above water?

Or a turtledove chick who dies

on its first flight

from the potted plant?

Or a squirrel who breaks

the first nut of summer?

The leaves extend my limbs

into the earth, but

no matter how grounded I am

the questions come like raindrops,

bursting into the hard, white buds

that will bring orange fruit.

Frog
Credit: Hannah Lyles

The Question Box

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I, distracted

from my own unraveling,

was afraid you’d come undone with me.

I watched my own heart disintegrating

into pixels on the screen of a game.

Two-dimensional play:

You can go back but never past

the beginning where you still had

full health; a life to spare on love.

Or, forward

where there’s always an ending in sight,

the drop-off into the next level.

 

What’s in the in-between?

They say the magic happens here,

in the mess of day two,

when the monsters come out to eat.

With each step, I lost a little more

of me and you.

But, isn’t it funny that with the undoing

comes clarity, while the fabric hangs

looser and looser?

Falling apart and liberation

are two sides of the same coin.

 

 

So, I’m building a new house

with bricks found on the roadside;

the same pieces that nearly killed me

as they fell from the sky.

With my pen, I draw the outlines

of windows, the blueprints for forgiveness.

Inside, you’re a phone call away.

Inside, the blood flows a little easier;

the ink forms symbols of hope in space.

 

——————————————-

Featured image credit: Ray Che (https://www.flickr.com/photos/rayche1989/5203972988)

(Anxiety is) Just a Block Away

On By HannahIn poem2 Comments

Whenever I feel my feet walking in the direction of despair,

I stare at the ground, desperately looking for a dropped coin

in hiding. Some days, it takes longer to find something shiny.

Other days, I look up to see if there is anything

resembling God, like a heron flying,

a servant to the tides and the king of the lakeshore.

It flies with a grace I’ll never have.

My flying is poetry. The words

put together this way and that way, mirroring

the soaring wings moving with the whims of the wind.

 

That’s me on a good day.

 

Sometimes there is nothing but broken glass and empty wrappers

that used to hold something sweet; just grey cement.

But, finally, between the cracks, there’s moving brown:

a small lizard with a throat bigger than mine.

Poetry is my red-throated neck. It saves me

from the tumble, the voice that says “you’re not enough”.

The words sag and stick on the walls of my head;

a big,

choking piece

of food that won’t go down.

 

But somehow, by looking around, gravity is relearned.

I fall but—

the ground of the page catches me again.

Give me a few days and my faith will waver.

Give me a few lie-ins and I’ll never wake up.

But, for now, my feet find a way that’s not a block away.

Bang!

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I have not built a house of words

for some time. Instead,

I, a silent nomad,

walk the pages of others’,

running, stumbling into

hotels of experience,

settling down into

bathtubs full of dissipating foam.

But now, I fall into new water,

my own little pond, and feel

the bacteria of thought

ready for evolution,

ready for another big bang.

Still navigating the way,

but I am here again

ready to write my path.

A solitary planet

on the orbit heading to

somewhere called home.

The expanse of sky turns

into a page, fresh like air

in empty places.

Some words appear,

a resupply of oxygen in lungs.

And in between my cheeky teeth

and pointed pen, the new year

shows a new poem

with more on the way.

((Photo of Girl With Candle by Dan Rushton.))