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There are miracles when I open my eyes.
The smile on the cat, the taste of strong coffee.
A Beethoven symphony while I taste dark chocolate.
I exist in the present, next week is nebulous.
The touch of my baby's cheek against mine
defeats the demons and destroys chaos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgXtR-Z6G9s
Check out my you tube channel where I read my poetry.
My road, with the dawn of a beautiful golden sun, took me to a little rural Taranaki town called Opunaki.
There my bride and I took part in an emotional, short ANZAC Day ceremony....where in an ancient clifftop cemetary, against the backdrop of a raging ocean surf, thirty souls and two dogs remembered the troopers who sacrificed for their country in two great world wars.
The New Zealand flag flew hard and the words of the old Priest were lost in the gale... but the tears ran freely down every cheek as the little transistor radio played the military horn's Last Post at full volume.

It was a slice of old Taranaki and a comemoration of the ANZAC DAY of years gone by.

LEST WE FORGET
April 25 2024
A response to Phillip Kurt Behm's emotional poem, "The Road (unedited)"
Sunrise was just a red line in the inky void, as Lisa and I reached the harbor decking stairs,
but at once, the brazen slash began widening, like a silent, slow motion explosion,  
thin, smoky wisps of cloud, like flammable tissue, prismed the stage light ignition.

bee-de-deep my phone chirped. It was Peter (my bf).
“Hey you,” I pronounced, as Lisa took off her left sneaker and shook it, upside-down.  
“How’s the harbor?” Peter asked. I glanced at my watch, it was 5:32 am in New Haven.
Peter must be at lunch (in Geneva) and tracking our morning run with the ‘Find My’ app.
“Beautiful,” I pronounced, “they’re really putting on a show.”
Of course, I meant the universe, the sun, the turns who were already at work, and Long Island Sound.
The gulls, perched on whatever, and grousing at each other, obviously haven’t had their coffee.
I read that AI had decoded bird talk and on a wire, they chittered, “Move over, you’re in my space.”

“Just wanted to say good morning,” Peter confessed, “Good Morning.”
“Good morning,” I wished back, “gotta go,” I replied, Lisa had finished de-pebbling her shoe.
“Yep,” Peter agreed, “Seee ya,” he quipped. “See ya,” I chuckled, smiling.
My watch asked, in my Air Podded ears, “Have you finished your workout?” because I was motionless.
I pressed the crown of my watch and slid the phone back in my pocket, our jogg’s only half done.

We began our harbor exodus, by turning our backs to the haven. It was already beginning to busy with boats.
We slipped on our hats and protective, polarized sunglasses as we began to run directly into the blazing sun.
.
.
Songs for this:
Sail on Sailor by the Beach Boys
Dancing in the moonlight by Toploader
Cold Heart - PNAU Remix by Elton John, Dua Lipa, PNAU
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge: Exodus: a departure or in the bible, a mass emigration situation.
Knife edged, this twisted world
Where men sit on their hands,
Despite the carnage, sanctified
Despite where outrage lands.
Blinkered to the massacre
Oblivious to death
Ukraine and in Gaza
Via Satan's filthy breath,
Carnage bleeds, unsated
Innocents now die
Dismembered in the rubble
Where little children cry.

We in distant nations
Sit remote and quite detached,
Unhindered by the distance
Untouched, unattached.
We wring our hands in anguish 
What more can we do?
This smothered insignificance
A sad defense for you.
Whilst the Ogre in the Kremlin
And the Mullahs in Iran
Dispatch their lethal warfare
Eviscerating man.

Ego and the Caliphate
Combine to force the hand
With nuclear threat to NATO
In the ultimate demand.
China on the sideline,
Poised to hit Taiwan,
Awaiting the confusion
To join the battle song.
Extermination Israel
Taking Saudi's oil rich wells
And a settling of the score
In sending Infidels to Hell.

Here we sit in our seclusion
With a blue sky overhead,
Not a thought that our tomorrows
Possibilities....may be dead?
Not a thought that our inaction
At this point of time entails
The destruction of the order
Here on Earth, that now prevails?
Have you bitten hard the bullet,
Have you clenched your teeth in rage?
Have you stamped your foot in anger
To decide to turn the page?

Have you weighed the dreaded consequence
Of just blithely carrying on....
Or will you gather up your skirts
To Sing Our Planet's Battle Song?

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
9th March 2024
.
There must be
a hell where
forgotten
words and lines
dwell.
Similes scamper,
lost like beetles.
Bat winged metaphors
fly to that dark
hell of forgotten
poems.
If those wandering
words escape, they are
gone forever.

When I swim in
the ink, and the
writing streak starts,
the prose comes to
me while I try to nap.
Now, I sleep with
pen and paper,
to put the words in
that white paper
prison where they
belong.
Check out my youtube channel and my book, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, available on Amazon.
~
No view of sunrise
from this garden of delete

We are alienated
from your light, trapped by local clocks in imperfect time

Everyone after Adam is broken, and we carry it along our bit of shoreline

Braziers on the beach
in consequence of
the darkness in our hearts

Hoping either to be rescued or swallowed up
by the sea

~
You make
me
laugh
out loud
if thats not love
tell me
what is?
I’m listening to gentle praising
the wind praises the trees
as it soughs through the leaves
the leaves tremble at the touch

birds praise the gusting air
as it carries their songs across
the nimble land to my ear
a trilling of joys and feathers

my heart joins in, making the trio
a quartet of flute, timbrel, song, and heartstrings
melodiously transporting all who listen
to join the angel choir in windy praise songs

to Life


c. 2023 Roberta Compton Rainwater
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