Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Where did all the words go?


It’s not that my brain went silent
Seems the opposite is true
It’s not that I don’t have opinions
I have many, yet don’t have a clue.

I tire of ultra soapboxing rants
Get mired in shoulds and woulds and can’ts
What’s real flies by without a glance
As I watch the world dig itself blue.

If I turn it all off and imagine
I could wipe it all down with a glove
And surround the world in white lights
With my magical powers of love,

I’d submerge the pain of seeing
Obliterating being
Essentially fleeing
Into soft pink clouds above.

Perhaps I should take a small pill
A dose that would give me a smile
So I’d laugh off the drama around me
And pretend that I don’t taste the bile,

But then I wouldn’t see trees
That bring me to my knees
And so I’m praying, please…
Help us move beyond denial.

But praying involves belief
In what? I do not know
And hoping is a fairy tale
As rusted stories show.

What else to do but stop
Like fish from water, flop
Take sponge and then a mop
And let the water flow.

A flood, perhaps is needed
To purge the grime involved
To clean the slate and start again
Zipped up now, problem solved.

Ha, not my jurisdiction
My job’s to feel the friction
I have no inner witch-dom
To make this world evolve.

And so I’ve become silent
I watch as words go by
And feel my heart that’s breaking
While tears gone numb, run dry.

I take me to my tasks
Put on a loving mask
And hope this will not last
While clinging to the lie. 

©2011 Catherine Vibert

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

You Never Returned

It's been a long time since I posted in this blog...however, I'll be returning to the place that inspired this prose-poem next week, the land of the Cherokee, the rivers of the Tuckaseegee and Natahala. It made me think of this prose poem I wrote a couple of years ago and so I thought I'd bring it up to the top.

It was there in the misty mountains where my life began and ended. You left me at dawn, promising return by nightfall. I waited for years in the meadow of songs where we had built our love on pledges of golden sun and milky starlight.

You never returned.

Only the music of the storm was my solace. Shattered by the force of time and weather, I became blind. On my knees and with fingers numb from cold, I tried to find the path before me and stumbled into the dark echoes of the woods to seek shelter. Finding comfort on a bed of hemlock, I slept next to the gray wolf who consoled me as I wailed, holding me in his paws and licking my brow.

You never returned.

Only the laughing crows and battle cries of raptors could be heard in the forest. Songbirds fled to sing their cheerful melodies in less mournful places. My tears became the creek that flowed from the great mountains into the Tuckaseegee. Beyond an eternity of hope, shards of my crystalline heart can still be found.

You never returned.

__


Dedicated to those left behind on the Trail of Tears.

Happy Easter, Pappy

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