These women, they are old
in touch with ancient ways
the dredging of deeper points
they've come to know
and show, without hiding

Their faces are worn weathered maps
lines and holy roads
with soulful eyes
smiling they settle
and sit you down
beside them

In their circle of fire and knowing
these women of the earth
serve milky tea and mirth
their laughter resounds
it pounds the heart
grounds you there
in the fervent pureness
of your tears

her mother called her
a textbook virgo,
levelheaded, organized,
practical

and every spare moment she had
was spent writing

most of it was hopeful...
possibilities outlined neatly
on elite paper stock -
serious poems to be
submitted to editors,
poems to celebrate
special occasions,
outlines of plots
for short stories
she planned to write

her personal writings
were deeper, sadder

she wrote reams in a daily
journal about troubled
relationships, tiffs with
her husband and kids, her
competitive sister, each
comment meticulously penned
in an elegant flowing manner

but that final note she left
was the shocker,
written in a freakishly
jumpy, shaky hand,
overly loopy, jagged,
a note on cheesy motel
stationery, filled with longing,
with despair,
words spewing out of her pen,
out of control words
scrawled far from home,
the solitary writer engaged
in an emotional seizure,
facing her phantoms alone
and losing

For good, or for ill
Shalt I giveth mine life;
For good, or for ill
I shalt giveth to mine wife.
For good, or for ill
Shalt I comfort her woe's;
For good, or for ill
I shalt relax her mind, as poetry flow's.
For good, or for ill
Shalt I giveth her fill;
For good, or for ill
I shalt abode in her field's.
For good, or for ill
As slave, free, or peasant;
For good, or for ill
Tis, her amare I represent.
For good, or for ill
She's mine life's cause;
For good or for ill
We art more than real, as tis us the devil won't stop........



©Brandon nagley
©Earl Jane nagley dedication
©Lonesome poet's poetry

I've been trying to reach you,
In this silent dead area,
Where neither I nor you can see,
The dark and misty air,
Vague,
Though clear.
I can see you on the field,
Looking for a place to shield,
You and me,
We are distant,
But not that far from reach !