Sunday, August 12, 2012

Quenched

Stepping with bare toes across
meadows of balsamroot
I glide swiftly on grasses
soft from last night’s rain.

Quietly slipping between rocks
I meet the gush of spray;
with full pupils down,
tiny rivulets cascade my bare shoulders.

Droplets form and cling precariously
to my hair, responding as I shiver;
a flirty audience of aquilegia formosa
quivers with the steady rush.

The voice of the waterfall
is a mighty quenching of everything;
a gushing spray of explosion and tranquility, reverberating
like the sound of a mother’s heart in a growing womb.

I didn’t come here to grieve, only to soak
in the majesty of a paradisiacal place;
but my heart remembers and wishes I could have buried you here,
instead of where you ended up, in pieces, on porcelain.

I feel embryonic in the moment, wholly enveloped, naked, treasured.
Coming alive in the lusty boom, I scream, and moan,
and grieve, leaving everything here on these ancient stones—
laboring with the violent echo of women’s loss before mine.

I hold hands with the knowing barren wombs
and weep the deficit that will never feel your sigh at my breast,
your pink mouth to my skin, see the shine of accomplishment in your eyes.
They know how I feel—you were brief, but you were mine.

I let you go, but still carry you with me as I push through;
emerging back into the sun of life, weaker and stronger,
spent, and refreshed, sprinkled with pure minerals,
with lilac and wild lavender, and just a hint of baby’s breath.


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

found in The Beautiful Sadness, dVerse and Poets United: Poetry Pantry

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Tide Pools


basalt,
discordant and black,
scattered the hillside of late warmth,
a cadaver benumbed of cherishment.

defeated, we wondered
what happened to us—
and how we had viciously squandered
our landscape in chimerical hue.

laying down our weapons,
prisoners of our own war;
in the tide pools of aftermath,
we beheld it together.

in harmony
we choked back the sobs of rue,
gathering the tiniest,
brightest, glimmer of tomorrows unwritten.


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner
linked to Vice Versa and dVerse

Friday, August 3, 2012

Chelan Haiku


sunrise
on the vineyard
the bees smell sweet


blue dragonflies
tango above
the lake in sea green


white birch night
the heady scent of you
in bent ryegrass
  

Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner  

Linked to Poets United #109 Poetry Pantry 

Friday, July 27, 2012

Paper Dolls, 1950’s Single Mother


butter she
mixed with sugar
and fed to us
on saltine crackers


we washed it down
with powdered milk
we were poor
we were rich
we didn’t know either


until we
went to school
and our dolls of paper,
worthless
to friends whose had
vinyl and mohair
and real clothes,


became priceless
because
she’d made
them all
by hand


for Mom and for Grandma (Elaine Rogers, 1926 – 2010)
Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner
added to The Poetry Pantry

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Noonday Jackals


Her thoughts took a dark turn
like jackals in the threadbare sun
ripping, ripping until she couldn’t see
herself, now a carcass of once-sought dreams;
a bone-hollow skeleton
stripped of all marrow by which future is made,
where the ink dried within.

Blood, first red then black, gathered in pools
around her head
until the ears spilled no more.
She’d done it to drown out the howling—
for who can bear the noise
of a broken heart?

The muting of syndicate
mocking and whimpering replete,
she worked the metallic taste of hate off her tongue.
It lingered though and became bitter
so she used her teeth to bite into its flesh
for nothing other than to taste a mellowing of salt.

A waft of perfume lingered in the cloying rot,
the remnant of her identity laying in the dust
while the air spilled with the scent of her decay;
a lone paper, yellowed and curled at the corners,
rattled in a wisp of wind.

A cloud began to form on the horizon,
a growing mist of dry, kicked-up earth,
swirling and choking the throat of tortuous barbs.
The cyclonic reclamation filled the desert of scars and loneliness,
returned sinew and marrow, blood and ink
to the supine form of the battered giant
of a dream so big the rabid enemy of her soul
was lost for strategy to bring down.
  

Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11

Friday, July 20, 2012

Summer Crickets


we held them
in an empty jar
holes popped into the lid

trickling grasses
and bits of dirt
to make their new home

they were always gone
by morning
set free as we slept

by grandpa
saving them
for tomorrow’s hunt


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Telling


she carpeted her windswept fears with conversational banality
every time he chanced upon her truths

when those raw elements exuded from her blood to her tissues
she could hold them back no longer

she had no more strength to restrain
those flooding fibers,

the secret self, less understood but more familiar even
than the blouse of self-belittlements she had grown accustomed to

with tremulous hand she peeled back the covers of her deathbed
confession

when the things she could never say
began to drip, horrifyingly, from her lips

she knew she’d been dying to tell him
it was death not to


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner 
Linked in the 1st Anniversary Edition of dVerse Poets Pub OpenLinkNight

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Unsung Rain


I held you in my hands,
cupped you to my face,
drenched myself in your flood,
and hid tears in your presence
                        as a secret we shared.

Your music put me to sleep
and drowned the echo of sorrows
in long nights you rocked me,
showering drops against the pane
—were you begging to be let in?

When you stayed until the morning
washing and making things new,
I’d wake and sing my insensitive song,
frowning, I’d begin…
“Rain, rain go away…"

Even then you would sigh,
contentedly, from heaven;
peering sheepishly from behind clouds
as I wiped the sugars off my mouth
from the fruits that were your labor.

Never did you seek applause of me,
always willing to play sidekick, straight man, to our comedic sun
while I laughed among flowered mornings
that without you
                        would never have been quite so sweet.


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Reconciling the Sea - a series haiku


watching driftwood
roll in                   
silently                  



slow sea breeze
blowing salt
into old wounds



the undercurrent
an ocean
between them



the tide
rinsing away
bitter roots



fingers
like seaweed
intertwine



their kiss
on the beach
even seagulls speechless



tongues make
slow laps
home


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner

added to dVerse Poetics: Whatever the Weather and Poets United Poetry Pantry 

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Crumbs


the crumbs of midnight
still hang on the eaves of disappointment
while she longs for tenderness
from an empty bottle
of hope

it stares back, blankly
wordlessly reminding her
unfittingly placed
it does not spring eternal

nor can it button
the suit of outgrown
reasons she pulls the cork
to suck from its desiccated dregs again 


Copyright 2012 Jennifer Wagner
added to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night