Resurgences (2 tenWords)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

winter garden

tiny grave beds

(tu)lips are whispering,

“come, spring”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

tracing her scars

like braille, mouthing,

I

lived

to

tell

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner

For dVerse, the tenWord, a form created by Brian Miller.

Simply Jesus

your blood blooms still 

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

When there’s not enough hyssop

to cleanse me of all these flaws—

I think I must live with them,

make slow improvements

with the

tick tick tick

of time’s cruel elements.

I know too well this unruly thing

inside me is me,

but there, too,

is the me that hungers for her first love

somewhere buried beneath

bruising, hardening, scarring

it throbs,

however disjointedly.

I am not a girl of

ritual, rules or religion.

I only know that at fifteen

I just wanted

to hold Your hand.

And now,

beyond church

and the things they add to it all,

and bitter politics

and the things they take away from it all,

and morality,

and all these rules I break—

I stand here today

wondering

when did I ever get the idea

You were not enough?

In dark,

in cloud,

in lightless days,

Your blood blooms still.

And I remember

I never needed

anything else anyway.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

1 Corinthians 2:2-5.  And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony^[a] of God. ² For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. ³ I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. ⁴ And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human^[b] wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵ that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Electric

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

I searched and searched

for the sun, but could not find it.

So I traveled east to where your arms

grew soft against mine, softer.

The full bloom scent of electric blue

burst within the wild

to chase that dark day wisp of cloud to white—

white like night when just past black,

and into new day dawning

to find and enter that centered

rose of sun,

asking where I’ve been.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

Poets United: The Poetry Pantry

Brandywine

Organic Brandywine Tomato Sprouts

I’m going to buy an orchard

and pick fruit, waving flies away.

I’ll wear a straw hat

and a sleeveless shirt.

I’m going to garden

and bake pies—

thick ones, full of hearty chunks of tart fruit.

And I am going to walk in the evenings,

when it’s still light,

after grilled chicken and sliced tomatoes.

And I’m going to forgive myself

when I remember all the things I never did.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

Poets United:  The Poetry Pantry

 

After the Thunderstorm Night

 

Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

 

When you

look at me like that,

as if I’ve hung the paper heart moon

with artistic hands,

a lavender morning mists softly

against my skin, each cell brightening,

stretching toward a living,

growing new day.

All I want is to breathe,

to breathe in this sky of moment, deeper,

to feel each evolving hue as it rises

like milk and sugared tea on my tongue;

to hum my birdsong notes

back to you,

and your arms

of encircling sun.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

“Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn't people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?”  -Rose Kennedy

for dVerse OpenLinkNight 

The Carbon Dioxide (of Poetry)

when all the shapes of dreams

flew by outside your window

and you couldn’t catch one

to call your own,

when every

gnarly, blighted

branch of life’s undoing

rotted right up through your soles,

those pieces of poems called out,

laying dormant in blades of nevermind grass,

for you to crawl

across the grit of unholy floors,

to find grace through

time-smudged glass

and see them

beneath the soil, coiled

and waiting for you

to breathe them into birth

 

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

 

A sort of tribute to poetry itself, as it is National Poetry Month, and how poets are given poetry and with it the ability to turn pain into art.

for dVerse OpenLinkNight

 

Maybe She's Shy

crimson grapes, image:  public domain

there’s a musical

note

on the back of her tongue

never sung

but it tastes

like vintage pauillac bordeaux

if you let her

do the talking

Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Wagner

*The wines of Pauillac are rich, full bodied and tannic, while gracefully combining elegance with power coupled with complexity.  They have the ability to age and evolve for decades. It has been said the best Pauillac wines taste like “An iron fist in a velvet glove.”  The Wine Cellar Insider.


For Grace's Sunday Mini-Challenge:  Poets in the Kitchen at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads
and for the Poetry Pantry #141 at Poets United.