"footfall" poems
Derartu, Haile, Tirunesh
Kenenisa, Meseret, and all
With a similar footfall!
Displaying a superb
Long-distance athletic feat
When many superstars
Awe inspiringly you beat
And as a result of it
When your sought-for
Fought-for
And nation- prayed-for
Dream proves a hit
And also with kudos
A stadium full of people opt
You to greet
And when spectators
Accord you a high five
It is for your country's flag
You immediately dive!
Also on the podium
while Ethiopia's row-wise
Green,Yellow and Red
Emblazoned flag,
Shoulder high,
Soars above
You express
Your umbilical cord-tight
National love
With tears that
Trickle down each of
Your cheek,quick.
Is it because
Reminiscent of
Each living hero
With a life sacrifice
That brought colonial
Aggression to zero?
Is it because
The bounty of the land
You grew up
Seeing first hand?
Is it because
The cherished corner
You cut in the heart of
The poor but prideful
Ethiopian neighbour?
Is it because
The unity in diversity
That showcases
Ethiopia's identity
Or citizens hospitality?
Is it because
At heart strings a tug
Or ,among others
Gratefulness to
Your iron-strong lung
When you hear
Ethiopian anthem sung?
Is it because a secret another
Deep down you harbour?
Is it because the Fertility
Hope and Sovereignty ideals
The flag advance,
Also Ethiopia's being
A beacon of independence
What is more
The nation's renaissance
Which in a curtain of mist
Before your eyes dance?
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:02 AM UTC
One misstep,
an ill placed footfall,
the single clumsy blunder,
can ruin even the most graceful
trips.
The mortal enemy of canvas
is the day the sun doesn’t shine.
The day the sky sheds its grey onto earth.
Whether rain or snow,
it doesn’t matter much.
One misstep,
and cold hearted canvas
absorbs the error you’d like to erase.
Mistakes fade,
but will always be remembered
by your cold, wet socks,
and the cold-hearted canvas.
Sep 15, 2010
Sep 15, 2010 at 11:16 AM UTC
She had hung it up from the mantelpiece in her bedroom, so when he entered the room there it was. It was suddenly lovely and he immediately imagined her body flowing into it, flowing from it. Standing close to the dress he brought his fingers to the fabric, touched gently, stroking then, as though it already held her form and substance.
Stepping past thoughts of her that so stirred his body he entered the pattern of the dress. It was a meadow in southern Ontario. July, when already the sun had bleached the profusion of grasses: water chestnut and papyrus sedge. He had stepped from the untidy veranda, past the pond, and down the rough track between the fields unmown, uncut, left fallow. As he entered the breaks of woodland between these swathes of grassland, deciduous leaves, dry and brittle from the summer's heat, were strewn on the path, and between the trees clumps of bramble bushes with berries of red and blue, black and purple.
There was no wind. The only sounds an underlay of crickets, his footfall, and the sharp mournful cries of geese on the now distant pond.
He saw her like an apparition standing motionless at the woodland’s boundary; her dress at one with all that surrounded her. When he came close and placed his hand on her shoulder he could smell the sweet dry earth mingling with her body's sweat, a hint of her *** as he placed his cheek against the shower of printed pollen amongst the leaves on her back.
Back in the late afternoon bedroom he heard her move about in the kitchen, and the spell broken, he turned away and went downstairs.
Several days later, as they prepared for bed, she slipped the dress on. As she stood in the lamplight smoothing it against her flanks, adjusting its fall across her ******* he felt himself faint that such a thing of beauty could be a joy forever . . . and beyond.
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 4:55 AM UTC
Somewhere between eggshells and landmines
Were the creaking floors upon which I played
Carefully, for her wrath could be detonated
At a footfall, just a bit too heavy
From a word uttered under the breath
A mess left too long in the sink.
But her embrace was warm,
Wrapping around me like sheets from the dryer
And when she put on pause her own life
To tend to me at my sick-bed,
Her eyes showed only tender love.
“My baby goat,” she would say, affectionately,
And leave a kiss upon my feverish brow.
She is a living contradiction, my mother:
Churning disapproval shattering the gleam
That she put into the hopeful eyes of a child
Just a moment before.
I lived in perpetual uncertainty,
Never knowing which mother I might see next:
The raven or the hen.
And now she looks at me with disappointment,
Wondering aloud why her children fear her.
Her capriciousness eroded away any trust
And much of the fondness as well
Her hot-blooded adoration
And her ice-cold tantrums
Have mixed so long now
All that is left is
Lukewarm like the bathwater
Left over from when the
Baby was thrown out.
Sep 11, 2023
Sep 11, 2023 at 7:16 PM UTC
Fatima Latima
I had wished I had no gift of sight
That the worst I could endure is hear you speak
And not snapshot the footfall of your gradation
You may not be a thief
Nor **** daughter of the dayspring
But definitely my heart you stole
I speak of the daughter of Arabia
Aesthetically, she rocks
The queen of the pilgrim sands
And aeonian desert stones
Beyond the hijab
Artistically knead with consummate craft
Like the relics of Mecca
Blest by the prophet’s bones
The blessed
I see torches
Beaming with intelligence
Within those mascaras
Exquisitely trimmed and vibrant
A lulu class botany
She fixes a searching gaze
As she saunters close
And the stride and tread
Beats a drum entrancing
Soothed in her solacing spell
I give in, to her lullaby
She halts her perambulation
Stands magniloquent and stupefy
Like some pop diva magazine pose
Or Victorian secret shot
A tactical derangement of her gluteals
As she rests her palm in its cleft
I feel contractions, my dartos muscles
The blew of summertime
Gently beats her exceptional form
Her belt submerge her thigh crevice
Cleft by the sundered rift of fleshy fat
Built by the dainties and delicacies
Seasoned by the finest Arabian chef
As her silken dress slithers and gowns
Under the breeze bulging and blooming
Like a rose blossom or sunflower fore
As she bends down
To assuage the burlesque
The sun specula lilts her sensational
Her smile apologetic bids me stillness
I am caught staring
Guzzling down her scent and
Feasting on empty imaginations
Of What If that accentuate the mind and
Speed a hormone
And I pray I sin no more
Next time we meet and I see her again
For I am but a writer
Learning to use my pen and paper
And hope you but forgive
My linguistic impotence
When I make my confession
Employing too plain a language
When I say thus;
Her smile is classical
Her walk magical
Her beauty celestial
Her stride sensational
Her religion ethical
Her character spotless
And that leaves me breathless
And forgive if I step on broken toe
And try speak of the unspoken
Her ****** is sacred
Her being a type that dresses up
In the milliards of brutes dressing down
And shamelessly style it fashion
I must see a priest
One confession I ought to utter
And even vociferate abroad
For once I had fallen in love
With an Arabian Beautie
A ****** of Mecca.
Jun 18, 2012
Jun 18, 2012 at 9:12 AM UTC
'What do you make so fair and bright?'
'I make the cloak of Sorrow:
O lovely to see in all men's sight
Shall be the cloak of Sorrow,
In all men's sight.'
'What do you build with sails for flight?'
'I build a boat for Sorrow:
O swift on the seas all day and night
Saileth the rover Sorrow,
All day and night.'
What do you weave with wool so white?'
'I weave the shoes of Sorrow:
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.'
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*I see that far away look in your eyes
Are you leaving me once more?
like Whispered conversations
falling down a spiral staircase.
Like secrets as they hide in silence.
I can hear them in the night
Yet I don’t.
The same way that voices are lost
In the ****** of **********
The same way the rose fades
without water.
The same way stars melt
when daybreak calls.
I listen intently for your footfall.
Walking away, only echoes remain.
And inside my chest the sounds
that a heart makes when breaking.
And I contemplate
the dangers in your beautiful eyes.
And the gravity of the stars.*
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 10:28 AM UTC
Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
Of Homer’s or of Dante’s heart sublime,—
Not Michael’s hand furrowing the zones of time,—
Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
Nay, not in Spring’s or Summer’s sweet footfall
More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
As many men are poets in their youth,
But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
Even through all change the indomitable song;
So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
Upon this beauty’s power shall wreak no wrong.
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I walk so often, late, along the streets,
Lower my gaze, and hurry, full of dread,
Suddenly, silently, you still might rise
And I would have to gaze on all your grief
With my own eyes,
While you demand your happiness, that's dead.
I know, you walk beyond me, every night,
With a coy footfall, in a wretched dress
And walk for money, looking miserable!
Your shoes gather God knows what ugly mess,
The wind plays in your hair with lewd delight---
You walk, and walk, and find no home at all.
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He carries her purse on his arm
without awkwardness;
His comfort shows he must have been caretaker,
for some time.
Yet awkward she does feel.
He carries her purse on his arm
as if it belonged there.
Just another parcel to be handled
with care; yet not a care
to what this stranger thought.
This old woman hobbles
ambling behind;
a footfall - thrusts her forward,
one more step.
Doesn’t he understand she wants to go forward -
no more? One step closer
to the grave,
she can sense.
The cane catching
and holding her steady;
The pain, catching
and holding her firm.
She follows his lead; always hitting the mark
with her blue veined hand
wrapped around that staff
in her grasp.
Her gait, unsteady,
wobbly at best
As he carries her purse on his arm,
She follows his lead
one step at a time
A crooked cane
her only assist for the
ambulatory impairment she bears;
as he carries her purse
on his arm.
© 2010 Marlene Dunham
Jul 20, 2010
Jul 20, 2010 at 9:11 PM UTC
for Robin
On that frosted January day,
you and I hiked north
along the Mississippi shore
on a trail marked well before us.
Footfall tapestries etched in snow
wove tales of assiduous commerce
of hosts of fur-cloaked cousins:
the playful step-slide gambit of an otter -
rabbit paw tracks by the score.
A bald eagle soared above singing ripples
in quest of a mid-day meal.
The distant staccato cadence
of a pileated woodpecker
echoed off the limestone bluffs
on that January afternoon.
Dusk-light washed the western sky
in pastel gold and crimson hues.
A coal barge heading south
thundered against the floes,
scattering ice across the channel,
then vanished beyond the bend.
And we like bargemen at their tillers,
set our southward course
retracing footprints in the snow -
back to the world of clocks and enterprise.
January, 2011
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 6:14 AM UTC
Oh, come on you black-eyed
***** Night. Spite me
with sleep. Strike me, like
a cottonmouth. Sing me
your dark song, like a footfall
in my hallway, like a night watch-
man dropping his lantern,
a last turn of the fan, a whisper
of a mystery, a kiss with wisteria
and moonshine on your breath.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 8:11 AM UTC
Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart hegin to beat;
And Time bade all his candles flare
To light a measure here and there;
And may the thoughts of Ireland brood
Upon a measured guietude.
Nor may I less be counted one
With Davis, Mangan, Ferguson,
Because, to him who ponders well,
My rhymes more than their rhyming tell
Of things discovered in the deep,
Where only body's laid asleep.
For the elemental creatures go
About my table to and fro,
That hurry from unmeasured mind
To rant and rage in flood and wind,
Yet he who treads in measured ways
May surely barter gaze for gaze.
Man ever journeys on with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.
Ah, faerics, dancing under the moon,
A Druid land, a Druid tune!
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;
And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,
And all benighted things that go
About my table to and fro,
Are passing on to where may be,
In truth's consuming ecstasy,
No place for love and dream at all;
For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,
That you, in the dim coming times,
May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.
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I can’t sleep.
An endless wandering
piano strain
caught between
broken
finger
bones.
She lays
her head
against his
chest
listening
as
ships
sail
across his
heavy heart.
A sad
mourning
wail
of
wind
echoes
in
each breath
he takes.
I hope
that
soon
death will
come
like
hundreds
of arrows
in
the night.
Each aflame
with the
lies
and conceit
of the
human race.
Only then
will I slumber
content
beneath
the skies
of
moons
and stars.
Glistening in
continuum
with the chorus
of
small voices
and the movements
of the
universe.
A haunting
twisting
melody
that
reminds
us of memories
and their purpose
of nostalgia.
The notes
that
urge
us to go
on.
To hope
when hope
is gone.
Because I can’t
sleep,
I dream
of brokenness
and hopelessness.
A darkness
darker than
the night
disturbs
my unseen
eyes
and billows
beneath my
hair.
I look to them
both,
standing
so close to
the edge,
and I pray
like sweet honey
that
drips from
cultured
lips,
I pray for
them both,
The girl and the boy who haunt my sleepless nights.
I watch
as they
peril
in
my demise,
slowly
my brain
rots away
and
my limbs
deteriorate.
They have
nothing
left
of me.
Only
a fleeting
idea
that nags
at their
consciousness
each footfall
bringing
them farther
from my
soul
and closer to
their empty
air.
It was
like
they too
never existed,
as both
fall
to the
violin
that soundtracks
their never-ending
sorrow.
The girl and the boy who haunt my sleepless nights.
Now we
both
will
slumber
forever
beneath
the moons
and
the
stars
for
eternity
forever
content,
unsatisfied,
restless.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 4:13 AM UTC
Plot a course through downtown doors
then drift along the concrete shores
of asphalt oceans navigated
under stars
imitating
broken curbside glass--
over crunching gravel miles
measured in half-hours
and meted out in heavy, fogging breaths
and squinting, midnight eyes...
Counted out the blocks, counted steps
and concrete squares by metered
three-four thoughts dancing across
reflected skylines, just behind the eyes.
Each step's a held breath,
each footfall a prayer on crumpled paper,
each set of shoulders, a hanger for...
coats are homes
for hands
rolling up in pockets
fishing for some solid anchor,
sinking into years of walks and silent words like these.
*** * ***
Listing hard, adrift for years
water-logged and pocked--
no anchor--
shredded sails and leaning masts
tell stories
of deck fires:
leaping rats,
and charred strakes
Clear deck,
empty hold,
abandoned helm.
this coat's Atlantic fog.
Frayed rigging like cobwebs stretch
down and across
like lines on faces aged by the frost
on midnight walks.
Strike the colors, mate...
Admit you're lost.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 12:41 PM UTC
her dog put to slumber. thin as a puddle. there at the end would whimper with any footfall on a gentleman’s coat.
-
her pup a yip
in a backpack
when on occasion
she'd punch
a skateboard
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 3:39 PM UTC
Do not let the silence fool you,
The screams are stifled, through and through.
The gentle glint is in their eyes,
Soft smiles grin in wild surprise,
Though the man pretends to sleep,
He hears the words and faintly weeps.
When you walk in the empty hall,
There's no jubilant footfall,
Of yesteryears' purple vigour,
Just vibrant souls that you ignore.
Do not let the silence fool you,
The screams are stifled through.
Do not let the silence pacify,
There is no rest, waiting to die.
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 10:30 AM UTC
Covered feet on black clicking the time of walking stride
The fume of frozen gas sticking to my throat
The late winter leaves having stuck to guttered sidelines
Their huddled swaddled backs burdened with the soft shell of academia
I missed this place
As much as it is a sign of failure it also holds triumph
Where I found my mind when I thought the world
Was defined by a god long dead
That I was lost in a sea of faces
Who prayed, believed and spread faith
Like a soothing blanket
Their thoughts where not troubled
They didn't not question
They had hope
As false as I believed it to be
Even now as I watch them
Flocking to bus stop shelter
How they hold a happiness beneath their chilled skin
Glowing with some assurance I feel I'll never have
But I'm pushing for that feeling
That place to belong
Somewhere between down to earth and too consumed with my study
But not quite there enough to fall into that group
That speaks academics but knows when to let go
But I can't let go
When it is a matter to the existence of even having a soul
Why do others not feel this need to know what constitutes their own being
Why do I scream out silently to persons whom I had not hoped to know
For we all know that faces on the web are less real than those we see
Everyday
Every moment waiting for that moment they would reach out and cure the ache of loss
They slow the footfall pavement
When passing the stop
Hearing the lively chatter
The silly matters that don't haunt an old soul not looking trouble
As if their frequency vibrates on a different level
Fm to my Am
Where the genuine character of my self turns back on itself
And I become the shy
Confused not knowing how to approach them
So instead of humiliate I walk by
Singing my oldies and rhyming my rhyme
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 12:29 PM UTC
Who goes amid the green wood
With springtide all adorning her?
Who goes amid the merry green wood
To make it merrier?
Who passes in the sunlight
By ways that know the light footfall?
Who passes in the sweet sunlight
With mien so virginal?
The ways of all the woodland
Gleam with a soft and golden fire -- -
For whom does all the sunny woodland
Carry so brave attire?
O, it is for my true love
The woods their rich apparel wear -- -
O, it is for my own true love,
That is so young and fair.
2.5k
living a charmed existence in the
shade of the seaward palm tree
but a telltale whisperer in hearts depth
sends doubters and scaremongers
like skulking figure's into the late day shadows
something darkly this way comes
some nameless faceless thing stalks this heartland of light
few pondered the night
few thought about what lay out there in the deep
brazen the lighthouse keeper
stokes the fires and keeps the lamps burning
no rumor of night will lay darkness at this door
no faint echo of footfall shall haunt this hour
again and again the lighthouse keeper
treads the midnight cold path of stones
along the seawall checking that all is well
raising his lantern and peering with old eyes
at the crazed cracks in the ancient wall
but none gave sign of weakness
none gave sign of peril
far out in the deep of the wider world
for the love of money and the greed of gasoline
something set in motion
some terrible beast of steel
and just as the moon set
in the final hour before dawn it came
heaving and rattling with such horrendous sounds
with bone rattling force laid its terrible hand on the seawall
and smashed the stones like it was no more than sand castle
this terrible thing so darkly come
unforgiven of wretched creature misguided soul
come to harvest the land of light
breathed with heavy burnt oil
breathed with mechanical labors
pulling its weight onto the shore
toppled the lighthouse extinguishing its light
darkness fell upon the scene
and with dreadful night returned once again to this shore
the seaward palm tree wither and die
no charmed place safe
from savage of dark
morning light never to return
in the shade of metal and oil fires night
the savage of darkness
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 9:10 PM UTC
Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.
If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.
2.2k
Oh, lead me to a quiet cell
Where never footfall rankles,
And bar the window passing well,
And gyve my wrists and ankles.
Oh, wrap my eyes with linen fair,
With hempen cord go bind me,
And, of your mercy, leave me there,
Nor tell them where to find me.
Oh, lock the portal as you go,
And see its bolts be double....
Come back in half an hour or so,
And I will be in trouble.
2.1k
BAREFOOT
I follow the road
of my father’s voice
journey with him
along white roads...over green fields
barefoot
to school & back
(shoes if at all...worn only to church)
picking up the cuts & scabs
stubbed toes
his going to school
would entail
in the early years of the 1920’s
only so much history to me
real
to him
his toes
knowing the wind
in the grass
for what it is
his toes
clasping a rock
fording a stream
Irish & poems
bubbling through his head
babbling along
the tongue
words thrown to
those lost summer skies
startling a blackbird
spouting his poetry
with poetry
of his own
(3 miles to school...3 miles back)
his mind a skimmed stone
dancing along a river
over unforgiving
stones
thorns attacking his feet
with undisguised relish
the vehemence of glass
glinting greedily
for the next footstep
the menace
of the twisted rusty nail
& its treachery
betraying the next footfall
as he walks over
the unremitting years
into my eyes
wide with wonder
listening to him
tell of himself
as a little boy
to his little boy
the me of then
my eyes now
following the road
of my father’s voice
as it wanders
barefoot
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 1:53 PM UTC
I'll see you around, but
not again on this empty floor,
the two of us in blankets, slept on our clothes,
woodgrain just out of reach.
Waiting at the station,
the 5 a.m. trolley home,
hands wrapped around my fare,
There's some memory of a dingy lastnight bar
where we chain-smoked through
the muted stop-motion of late-night,
whiskey breath and fingertips,
tracing the side of a face, the ends of nerves,
lost
in the traffic river crowd footfall,
at some patio latenight coffeehouse,
we were cinematic, mysterious under
the mercury lights that lit the sidewalk, that staged us
full, small, like hands wrapped around a cup with our name on it.
Oct 29, 2011
Oct 29, 2011 at 10:05 PM UTC
THE moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
Suddenly hid Love's moon away.
Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that Love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
ALTHOUGH crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.
These lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record what-s gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud
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