She Wore Armor (#26 Na/GloWriMo)

(inspired by Joy Harjo’s “She Had Some Horses,” resurrected for NaPoWriMo prompt)

(Thank you Na/GloPoWriMo for featuring my poem on Day Twenty-Seven of NaPoWriMo 2019)

She wore armor

She wore armor over her beating heart
She wore armor over her pendulous breasts
She wore armor over her curving hips
She wore armor over her mound of flesh.

She wore armor

She wore armor over her good ideas
She wore armor over her strong hands.
She wore armor over her written words
She wore armor over her selfless service

She wore armor.

She wore armor over the cold space in their bed
She wore armor over the spoken wounds
She wore armor over the indifference
She wore armor over the goodbye

She wore armor.

She wore armor when her husband left
She wore armor on the morning metro
She wore armor at her Pentagon desk
She wore armor in her smile.

She wore armor

Her armor shifted under his gaze.
Her armor protested under his hands
Her armor groaned under his kiss
Her armor cracked under his weight

She unfasrened her armor.

The Silences of Snow (#25 Na/GloPoWriMo)

 

Where are the silences of snow?
Squelching in the remnants
Duck paddling in the meadow,
Now morning cacophony of birdsong.

Already distant are the early
Squeaking of so-cold snow
The sun a struggling idea
Behind cocooned mountains

Sometimes the dogs would leap
And disappear
In powdery white highs
Charged with the changing landscape.

Coffee steaming in both hands
Layers and a hat, guarding their joy
One crow, I hear the feathers rustling
His individual wingbeats.

 

Stream of Consciousness (#24 Na/GloPoWriMo)

“Stream of Consciousness” A style of writing in which the author uses interior monologue to show how the mind works. The unbroken flow of a character’s thoughts and perceptions are revealed either directly (first-person narrative) or indirectly through free-wheeling discourse

The crow hops, hops, crow hops,
Murky swampy mountain meadow.
Front loader raking mounds of trash,
Washing machine bent, broken, retired.
Phone, mom, phone, husband, phone mom,Phone husband, phone mom.
The rain is snow in tiny Styrofoam pellets.
Little girl growling guard over dry pellets.
Explosion, whorls of pink laid wide open,Latte stripes wound up in fiber.
Anxiety whirls in loving, packet, teaching, living,
Each needs its place.
Tomorrow adventure and work.
Today, more struggle, vainglorious trying.

On Unwhinnied Mornings (#23 Na/GloPoWriMo)

When I think of how my flights were spent
Before these days grounded on my own feet,
A warm hide, coarse mane, hoofbeat,
Until my very being was rent.
Dark eyes, flicked ear, face buried in the scent,
My security, my dry future this love did cheat.
A lamb ambling to slaughter without a bleat,
Setting aside all that flying has meant.
My mind insists “Adults don’t need
The sieving sand steps when the world was best.”
My heart leaks the invisible essence of life.
Whosoever says a heart does not bleed
Has not from that ineffable organ wrest
The glory of those galloped heights.
inspired by John Milton’s “On His Blindness”