Out West

 

Lilies sprout,

butterflies rise up from their petals.

A new blade appears,

shining in the dirt,

flint sharp.

 

The beautiful things

aren’t dead,

one says.

True, echoes another.

 

Did I hear that right?

 

But all I’m met with

are bright, cherubic smiles

thrown over their shoulders

one after the other.

 

I take their meaning.

 

Jump fences, barbed wire,

float on dreams

left swirling up from the dust

on the trail.

 

Switchblade the lasso from your wings,

dig those boot heels in, girl,

 

fly.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For Dora’s prompt at dVerse Poetics

 

I Wrote an Essay on Suicide (in Tenth Grade)

 

That blue guitar I had

when I was young

is gone now,

frets and strings

pulled back to another time.

 

I remember the burning

on my fingertips,

the busyness of learning

to put the tune all together,

 

and a yearning

to scale

from basement

to window

to…

 

I don’t know,

Other.

 

I wanted to send a message

from hidden hours

I’d spent writing and sketching

figures of love and loneliness

draped across my waterbed.

 

Oceans have passed

since then

and the message

remains much the same.

 

Hello. I am.  And so are you. I see you,

lily among the cranberries

in a burning coffin.

Jump, but into a place

where snow and rain are soft.

 

The tune plays softly still,

lighting matches for hope’s candle.

 

Grasp it with me, together.

We’ll need the light,

and we’ve got many miles to go

before we sleep.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

Shay’s Word Garden Word List

 

The close is a twist on the close of Robert Frost’s poem.  Yes, I had a waterbed and a blue guitar in the 80’s. 

 

Blue

 

Every season sings a song.

 

The bells and sorrows

of winter

clang on and on.

 

But if Frost was right,

they, too, only last so long.

 

Stepping on

the turf of spring,

 

new birds fill their lungs,

have their say,

and hope renews that

 

nothing blue can stay.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

For Writer’s Digest April PAD Challenge Day 1:  Write an Optimistic Poem

 

Happy National Poetry Month!

 

Frost’s poem

 

Life Lessons for a Poet

 

Read one good poem a day.

Look up.

For every negative thought, think three positives. Because this life hurts too much already.

Duct tape your ugly mouth.  You are amazing and stop saying otherwise.

When all else fails, pray.

Everything will fail.  Pray.

Think of the children.

Talk a walk in nature.  Breathe it in.  Don’t forget what you learned there.

Remember: someone needs you.

Remember: you need, too.

Write, damn it.  That’s how you know what you need to know.  It’s your gift.  To yourself.

 

© 2023 Jennifer Wagner

 

Lift (For My Son)

And this, my very heart,

is the weight of water

like blood

bending the blooms,

smoke and mist graying tulips,

ash on butterflies’ wings.

My very heart! We bury

our dead selves

swollen but dry,

and in this come alive—the lift

in rain

and rain and rain again.

My very heart, see!

Instead of the weight, the gray, the ash—

the bloom,

the color,

the wings.

© 2020 Jennifer Wagner