She stands, embraced, in a vast field
where she can both lose and find herself,
where sunflowers lean, shoulder to shoulder,
faces tilted, ready to listen for things
she can’t bring herself to say—
a slender figure in white, barefoot
among the whispering stems.

The sky spills wide, endless and tender,
and she—just one small part of this silence—
listens to the earth keep quiet.
It is enough, she thinks to herself,
here, where questions scatter like seeds,
where the wind remembers to help carry
what can be let go—a cool hand
brushing her cheek, carrying the scent
of wild grass and the songs of unseen birds.

Beneath her feet, the soil breathes,
as if to say, stay—just stay.
She knows she’s small here—
but so is the sun’s last warmth,
so are the petals, one by one,
catching the day as it drifts away.

She could speak, let her thoughts
come out into the open,
but for now, this silence is enough.
A pause in her voice as the evening
hugs her like an old, trusted friend—
and she finds herself, somehow,
held gently in this quiet moment—
this, she admits, is plenty.

This is where silence blooms.

Life is a rough ride,
I’ve never been broken but I’ve lived through hell several times.

If I could have a reset…
Where would I pop in?
What would I leave behind
but the wisdom of my sins..

No, I think I’ll keep them intact
in the here and now!
After all
there is nothing I lack
that hasn’t gone afoul.

~my poet friends and friendly poets~

(written in anger, then sorrow,
tinged with regret, but in the end one
has no choice but to forgive and forget)

<•>

the ghood poet knows no boundaries,
lays down tracks of a New England
pond of nirvana,
or across Siberian froze wastelands,
another
salves the wounds of dying soldiers,
and gives away comfort to the dying
with the freeing oxygen of
comforting words

the world of self,
that thing we know best,
thus encouraged by the textbooks,
well,
to have at it, plays whacamole
with your  owned flirtatious emotions,
none too imperious or low down or
garbage dump *****, that yet
cannot be validated by exploratory
over-the-line words pithy

even the florid, tiresome nickel & dime ing
rhyming scheming crutches,
we so oft employ,
yields up stuff that ain’t half bad,
periodically,
though, the blunt of words well crafted
needs
no such delimiting amusing playthings
or imprisoning
I-am-amoebic-pen-tata-meter

take you inspiration from here and there,
the proverbial deep dark of the mind’s recessed corridors of
corrupted consciousness,
or, the
contrail whiffs of the steaming steaming of the contradictions of a
newborn first day’s contrast of-
the wet dew on toes cooling,
while the simultaneous sun warms all
the cheeks,
heats the blood with
a thanks-god-I’m-alive
overwhelmingly overall tickling,

or
not.

write with the tools you have, but keep
them well sharpened, with
insight and revelation,
exploring the rain’s windowed
navigable rivulets,
the musical tempos
of waves and their multi-mystical variations,
and the readers will come like
pilgrims to your  holy land,
wearied and yet so delightedly hopeful,
with tingling contrasting dictions,
to capture and release,
by shattering any
stale notions of adulation
will bring your
audience of holy voyagers and voyeurs
to imbibe so deeply your creativity for the quenching, and the
amen gasp escaping tween
their lips is just a simple holy,
gentling thank you

discard the bad words as ornery and
distracting, veiled in pomposity and
highfaluting, self-saluting, arrogance of
those deeming themselves critical thinkers,
who thrive in the low mud flats of
self-pretension and the reassurance
of a mirror’s reassurance

write straight from the heart,
fill our eyes with the
complexity of the simple
and
grant us the write to share,
in your humanity

craft the work
and
the work
will repay
so stealthily
by secretly
crafting you




                                   nml