Inner Workings

Prompt: looking below the surface

My electronic washing machine
sings to me when it’s finished a load.
My doorbell too, when pressed,
regales me with a tune.
And every mobile phone
sounds its personal music.

What does this express –
a pleasant conceit, or hubris?
To what do we aspire
in making our digital world?
Was not the Universe
created by a tone?

It Slips Down Suddenly

Prompt: The unexpected

It slips down suddenly
into a black pit, sliding
out of the top of my mind
and vanishing, between
one moment and the next –
a name I’ve known
for 25 years, just gone.

I know quite well
the person of that name,
his place in my history,
his place in his own.
I can picture his face and form
in front of me now, I can see
the clothes he usually wore.

But down the deep hole
where that name has fallen,
there is no pursuit
there is no retrieval,
no hook long enough
to reach and bring it up.
This crevasse is bottomless.

Is that how it happens,
so quick and easy?
Only a moment before,
something is there as always,
known and about to be said –
and then it’s an absence, as if
it had blanked out years ago.

Don't You Miss Going To See the New Star Trek Movie, Hear!

I didn’t want it to stop
until it did stop, perfect
in its unforgettable conclusion,
and I threw my fist into the air
raising Andrew’s arm with mine –
we’d been holding hands throughout.
He gripped mine tightly and laughed
as I exulted: “Yeah!”

Wednesday prompt: "Don't you ..."

Festival

Over there
they’ve just done Beltane,
the Rites of Spring.
Here, we had Samhain –
autumnal, dark.

There were two Beltanes
for me one year,
the year I travelled
to that country:
visiting poet.

There I met poets,
there I met witches;
both were my kin,
both embraced me,
and Spring was sweet!

I shared Beltane
with a new coven
in West Texas.
A coyote howled
from the near desert.

The High Priestess
my soul sister
played guitar and sang.
We spoke poems.
The wind swirled loud.

Back at home
the night of the dead
went on without me.
This time, that Spring
is ghost at the feast.


Now that the April Poem A Day challenge is over, Robert Lee Brewer on Poetic Asides is giving us a series of "Wednesday prompts". This first one is: Spring.

Farewell (April Challenge 30)

Prompt (for the last day of the challenge): Farewell.


Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well
- Byron


“Go well,” my friend Maureen always says
instead of goodbye – like a blessing,

the true meaning of “farewell”. I never feel
finality in leaving her, I feel her care for me

and its foreverness. Her words go forward with me,
a mantle of protection. As I travel forth from her

I am warmed; her loving wishes accompanying me
in benediction, and not for that moment only:

Love is my companion, attending all my journeys,
all my dailiness … until we meet again!